In yesterday's post we looked at the exhibition "Entangled: Threads & Making" at Turner Contemporary. Let's continue the thread (pun unintended…) for another day by shifting the attention to one of the pieces commissioned for the event, Anna Ray's multi-coloured "Margate Knot" (2017).
This piece is a three-dimensional abstract textile sculpture that looks a bit like a giant sea anemone occupying one entire wall of the gallery. Made by the artist in collaboration with a group of local Margate makers – among them assistants and volunteers - the piece is based on a previous artwork, "Knot", created ten years ago by Ray and based on the forms of under-wires from bras and the children's game Pick Up Sticks.
The "Margate Knot" includes 2,000 sewn fabric elements in sixteen colours, inspired, as Ray states in the exhibition catalogue, by the seaside of Margate, "The red harbour marker posts; the wine coloured and acid green seaweed; the colours of wild flowers growing up chalk cliffs; the brightly painted beach swings; a turquoise plastic ice cream sculpture; the buoys and knotted ropes that decorate the harbour arm."
Seen from a distance, the "Margate Knot" looks like a painting, but with a difference highlighted by the artist: "In a painting, the paint covers and stains the surface of a canvas. In contrast, a tapestry or a piece of knitting or embroidery has surface depth (…) 'Margate Knot' is an exaggeration of the experience of depth: a magnification of the intricacy of a textile."
After this exhibition all elements will be untied and reinstalled as a floor piece in a public performance, but they will still preserve their intricacy. You can read further about this piece on the exhibition catalogue.
Image credits for this post
Anna Ray, "Margate Knot", 2016, at "Entangled: Threads & Making", Turner Contemporary, Courtesy Turner Contemporary. Photos by Stephen White.
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