AL MUNRO Pleated Logic 14 May to 9 June 2016
AL MUNRO Pleated Logic 14 May to 9 June 2016
The paintings in the exhibition, Pleated Logic, continue my interest in exploring the way textile forms, such a pattern and structure, allow us to reconsider the spaces of abstract painting. Pleated and folded fabrics create spatial forms which are flexible and elastic; mathematically, pleating and folding allows a transformation from two dimensions to complex hyperbolic spatial forms. This exhibition draws on ideas developed on recent residencies in northern Thailand, and my interest in the heavily pleated Hmong textiles found in the region. These textiles are patterned with linear forms, often prints, stitched or embellished onto the lengths of cloth prior to pleating. The pleating and the movement it enables creates a shifting and deformation in the patterned surfaces. It is this play between spatial forms and the shifting, stretching and contracting of the patterned pleats which have informed this work.
Al Munro, ‘Expanded Logic 1’ 2016, acrylic on wood panel, 40 x 40cm
Al Munro, ‘Expanded Logic 2’ 2016, acrylic on wood panel, 20 x 20cm
Al Munro, ‘Folded Logic 1’ 2015, acrylic on wood panel, 40 x 40cm
Al Munro, ‘Folded Logic 1’ 2016, acrylic on wood panel, 30 x 30cm
Al Munro, ‘Inconsistent Logic 2’ 2016, acrylic on wood panel, 20 x 20cm
Al Munro, ‘Stretched Logic’ 2016, acrylic on wood panel, 91 x 91cm
Al Munro, ‘Vertical Logic’ 2016, acrylic on wood panel, 40 x 40cm
Al Munro, ‘Wave Logic’ 2016, acrylic on wood panel, 61 x 61cm
Al Munro, ‘Vertical Logic 2’ 2016, acrylic on wood panel, 40 x 40cm
AL MUNRO Interview Although Al Munro’s oeuvre is bursting with colour, flocked with glitter, full of texture and composed of patterns, a scientific basis that is layered beneath these vibrant surfaces informs and inspires her practice. Munro is based in Canberra at the Australian National University where she has recently undergone an interdisciplinary art/maths fellowship with the Department of Applied Maths, and completed a Phd that involved looking at the capabilities of textiles to describe scientific codes and mathematical data. It seems that Munro is able to explore complex theories, ideas and systems through textiles, often resulting in work that condenses her findings into geometric maps and dynamic forms. An appreciation of historical, cultural and contemporary textiles is also evident throughout Munro’s practice, which often adopts paint on canvas or board to interpret these ideas. The artist recently completed three residencies in Asia where she conducted research into traditional practices, whilst also curating the exhibition …a piece of string…, as to showcase interdisciplinary contemporary textiles. Pleated Logic is Munro’s newest body of work, which pulls together a lot of the investigations and aesthetic notions from her recent experiences…
1) You have completed two residencies in Chiang Mai in Thailand recently that you have credited as informing Pleated Logic. What particular findings or experiences from these international immersions were the inspiration? My residencies at Chiang Mai University Faculty of Fine Art in 2014 and 2015 gave me the opportunity to spend extended time in the studio developing new works as well as working into existing bodies of work. The colours of the contemporary textiles produced by the Hmong
and Karen ‘hill tribe’ people are a constant interested to me – brightly coloured and even fluoro synthetic yarns woven and embroidered into traditional patterns appeal to my sense of colour. On the trip to Chiang Mai in January 2015 I also became interested in the pleated fabric lengths produced for the contemporary versions of traditional Karen garments. These highly coloured and tightly pleated striped fabric lengths have led to this new body of work that looks at pleating as a way to distort pattern.
2) Last year you also completed a residency in Japan. What did this experience involve? In Japan I explored the relationships between the scientific imaging of crystallographic symmetry groups and traditional Japanese geometric repeat patterns. I undertook research at museums in Tokyo and Kyoto, including the Paper Museum, Edo Textile Museum and the Nishijin Textile Centre, where I studied samples of geometric patterning on paper and textiles. These patterns are also found in the 17 main ‘wallpaper’ groups of crystallography, the field of science that studies the geometry and structure of atoms within most matter. The residency extended my long term practice of using textile and drawing-based media to explore the way that the natural world is inscribed as a code, pattern or formula within scientific images.
3) What would you consider the biggest or one of the biggest break-through moments in your PhD art-making or research? I think this would have to be the realisation of the complex spatial possibilities of textile-based media.
Not only do textiles describe thefundamental Euclidean spatial concepts of point, line and plane – indeed the term line in geometry is derived from the latin ‘linea’ for linen or thread – but textiles also allow us to realise and explore more complex forms of space such as those of non-Euclidean geometries. The capacity for textile forms to stretch, flex, fold and curve means that both their artistic and mathematical potential is huge.
4) Who would you consider some of your primary artistic influences? Oh gosh now there’s a question… Louse Bourgeois’ fabric works are a constant joy. Marcel Duchamp’s various string works for the way he made work that was both experiment and finished artwork, and for its interrogation of the spatial possibilities of thread. His work ‘Three Standard Stoppages’ provided a light bulb moment for me in relation to textiles and space. And many many more…
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