Fans of the petit point technique know that it can be immensely satisfying; if they are art fans as well, they also know that this technique can be taken to the next level as Narelle Jubelin also proves.
Born in Sydney in 1960, between 1985 and 1987 Jubelin was co-founder (with Roger Crawford, Tess Horwitz and Paul Saint) of the Sydney-based Firstdraft Gallery, which remains today the longest running artist-run-initiative in Australia.
Jubelin has lived and worked in Madrid since 1996, working with different materials and techniques and exhibiting widely all over the world - from Italy (she exhibited her installation "Trade Delivers People", featuring porcelain buttons, string and lace and cotton petit point, in the Aperto section of the Venice Biennale in 1990), Spain and the UK, to the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
For over two decades, Jubelin has stitched miniature petit points, combining them with objects and textual citations in architectural, photographic and painterly installations.
Her next exhibition, opening at the beginning of February at Marlborough Contemporary in London is entitled "Flamenco Primitivo" and will feature quite a few artworks made with the petit point technique.
The title of the exhibition comes from the opening 'cante' (actually unsung) performed in Madrid by the contemporary Flamenco singer Niño de Elche. The event will feature petit point renditions of photographs from archival sources, photographic image banks or microfilm holdings in libraries of Modernist works by Anni Albers, Lina Bo Bardi, Lee Bontecou, José Guerrero, Hannah Höch, Ree Morton, Pablo Picasso, Mira Schendel and a collaboration between Josef Albers and Harry Seidler.
We live in a very visual age, and quite often our eyes are literally bombarded with several images every few seconds; Jubelin invites us to break this pattern by reducing a major work of art or an image into a smaller fragment, and asks us to slow down the process of assimilating a complex image through the intricate work of sewing in which even the smallest details (check out the view from the amoeba shaped windows carved in the brutalist walls of Bo Bardi's SESC Pompeia, the São Paulo-based cultural centre she redeveloped in the '80s, or Jubelin's rendition of a collage by Hannah Höch) are recreated, establishing in this way a new intimacy between the viewer and the work of art.
Jubelin employs coloured cotton threads stitched into silk mesh as if they were fine art paints, but her precise stitches should also be interpreted as a sort of punctuation, forming a grammatical structure that creates the context to contemplate an image or start a debate about it (therefore these works are best appreciated first from a distance and then close up, as done in this post).
There's also an interesting dichotomy to consider in Jubelin's pieces: the artist shows indeed the perfect fronts of her works, but doesn't hide the disordered backs, asking the viewers in this way to explore all the contrasting elements and juxtapositions behind a work of art.
There is a lot to explore and discover in these pieces not just for what regards the technique: while Jubelin's intricate and laborious sewing works compel the spectators to engage with the intimacy of scale, they also inspire them to analyse more in depth the concept of needlepoint as women's work, opening up in this way a conversation between grand works of art portrayed using a humble technique that miniaturises large works, while introducing other narratives intertwining feminism, education, cultural exchange, traditions, and transformation (her petit points pieces are indeed re-articulated representations of other works, so that they are transfigured and transformed recreations, quite often situated among other selected objects). In this way Jubelin's petit point fragments become parts of a larger conceptual whole.
"Flamenco Primitivo" will also feature five bronze works cast from packaging buffers designed for secure travel over huge distances - hinting at the geographies of Jubelin's practice, while also prompting visitors to consider again the theme of transformation since these quasi-Modernist totemic sculptures are essentially made with objects that serve to circulate goods in the world.
The event is completed by assembled video works documenting unrepeatable moments of the artist's own experience, colliding in this way the personal and the global experience in an exhibition that will prove interesting not just for art fans, but also for people keen on taking embroidery and textile art to the next conceptual level.
"Narelle Jubelin: Flamenco Primitivo", Marlborough Contemporary, 6 Albemarle Street, London WS1 4BY, UK, 4 February – 12 March 2016.
Image credits for this post
1 and 2. Narelle Jubelin, As Yet Untitled (Hannah Hoch, 1926), 2014, cotton on silk petit point, 36.5 x 28.5 cm, Courtesy the artist and Marlborough Contemporary, London.
3 and 4. Narelle Jubelin, As Yet Untitled (Lee Bontecou, 1959), 2014, cotton on silk petit point, 39.5 x 34.5 cm, Courtesy the artist and Marlborough Contemporary, London.
5 and 6. Narelle Jubelin, As Yet Untitled (Lina Bo Bardi, 1986-87), 2014, cotton on silk petit point, Courtesy the artist and Marlborough Contemporary, London.
7 and 8. Narelle Jubelin, As Yet Untitled (Mira Schendel, 1963), 2014, cotton on silk petit point, 27.5 x 24 cm, Courtesy the artist and Marlborough Contemporary, London.
9 and 10. Narelle Jubelin, As Yet Untitled (Pablo Picasso, 1932), 2014, cotton on silk petit point, 11.5 x 9.5 cm, Courtesy the artist and Marlborough Contemporary, London.
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