ARTAPESTRY6 Exhibition
FOREWORD ARTAPESTRY6 2021
For all of us , 2020 has been a bit strange and an unpredictable year. In beginning of 2020 we launched Call for Entries to Artapestry6 and since 11th March 2020 Denmark has been locked down and in the end of August the jury should have convene in Copenhagen to completed the jurying and selection of tapestries for Artapestry6. The jury could not meet in CPH because the corona-restrictions and instead we made a virtual jurying. Fortunately the two days virtual selection was a success and the jury found it exciting, super inspiring, powerful and they all enjoyed it .The jurors were impressed with the quality and diversity of the submissions and the works range from traditional tapestry, Jacquard weaving and decorative fabric. They decided for 43 works of 40 artists, from 16 countries. Thanks to the jury for making a strong exhibition.
With a growing wish to focus on tapestry art outside Europa, ETF decided to invite Helena Hernmarck and Nancy Koenigsberg two significant tapestry artists from USA to exhibit in an European showcase.
In a year like no other, it has been inspiring to see in the early springtime long queue outside the yarn shops of young women, to get knitting-yarn and needles, ready to knit through Covid19 pandemic.
New works of fiction about textile and weaving show how our lives are full of textiles and “woven stories”.
Textiles are such a natural part of our lives and culture and speak to our senses and memories and that makes them fascinating materials in artistic contexts. Tapestry and fiber art has become popular - as we saw it in the 1970s. We see with satisfaction young women/men has reinvented weaving and tapestry weaving and contemporary artists embraced textile in their search for new expressions in their artistic practice, without any weaving skills.
Anet Brusgaard
For ETF’s Secretariat in Copenhagen
EXHIBITION
Joan Baxter
(Scotland)
Title: Hallaig 2, 2017, 200 x 196 cm
Photo: Steve Clarke
Joan Baxter
My work is inspired by the landscapes, seascapes and cultural heritage of the Far North. The emotional spark for a tapestry could come from folk tales of the liminal space between high and low tide or the austere beauty of the mountains and rivers of the interior. Hallaig 2 shows a landscape and its lost people, a community and a heritage now scattered and fragmented but held forever in the heart.
Brita Been
(Norway)
Title: Chinese Cloud Jade / Skybragd Jade, 2014, 245 x 250 cm
Photo: Stina Glømmi
Brita Been
The idea originates from my first visit to China in 2002. Whilst working with the photo material I reflected on study days in Oslo and a visit to the Arts and Craft Museum, seeing old Norwegian cushion covers with cloud patterns (skybragd). This was a type of design used in traditional Norwegian tapestry weaving, based on the pomegranate-and-palmetto motif.
In ”From pomegranate to cloud pattern”, written by Ernst Fischer, he describes the journey of the cloud pattern from the Orient to Scandinavia.
And then I am back to my original starting point, China.
Marie-Thumette Brichard
(France)
Title: Back to The Harbour by Night 3, 2018, 193 x 180 cm
Photo: Hervé Cohonner
Marie-Thumette Brichard
This tapestry is part of a series about one of my first and wonderful childhood memories, when you are on board a ship by night and sea. The lights and the shadows of the harbour faraway. I am also fascinated by their mysteries all the activities you can imagine or guess. It is a high loom Gobelin tapestry weaved with wool (warp and weft) metallic thread and pure gold.
Anet Brusgaard
(Denmark)
Title: Petits Gubbes d’Or de la Terre Noire, 2018, 200 x 150 cm
Photo: Ole Akhøj
Anet Brusgaard
Guldgubber/petits gubbes d’or de la terre noire (small gold-foil figures from the Iron Age), cultic votive offerings and mythical runes – iconographic and magical ‘emblems’ expressing powerful existential messages to the outer world.
Over a thousand guldgubber were found in the Sorte Muld on the small Danish island, Bornholm, in the Baltic Sea.
These guldgubber, tiny little ones, paper-thin gold-foil figures embossed on one side most often with a couple, and particular for Sorte Muld, single figures and primitive animals such as bears and pigs.
Thomas Cronenberg
(Germany)
Title: Wehmut, 2019, 103 x 150 cm
Photo: Nadine Sickert
Thomas Cronenberg
My Heimweh Series is about home and belonging, homesickness and longing. This tapestry deals with feelings of regret and loss at having given up a prized collection of 1950s West German “Melitta” ceramics when we left Hamburg after living there for 22 years. The colors are more muted than usual, reflecting the ceramics’ trademark pastels, but also symbolizing increasingly fading memories.
Wlodzimierz Cygan
(Poland)
Title: Organic 4, 2020, 160 x 120 cm
Photo: Thiswaydesign
Title: Viruses, 2020, 80 x 80 cm
Photo: Thiswaydesign
Wlodzimierz Cygan
Organic 4
Organic 4 is the newest element in the series of improvised fabrics presenting various relations between the world of organic (created by nature) and geometric (generated by the human mind) forms. The aim is to search for harmonious relationships and to observe specific, individual cases.
Viruses
During the pandemic period, we could often see pictures of viruses in the media. The damage they cause to thousands of people does not change the fact that the forms of some are fascinating. The phenomenon of their mutation is no less fascinating. The 3-piece Viruses series is a side effect of the lockdown times.
Elmira Dementeva
(Russia)
Title: Satus Tempus, 2019, 100 x 300 cm
Photo: Elmira Dementeva
Elmira Dementeva
Satus Tempus - The beginning of time, a topic that has worried me for several years. Anyway, what is time? How can it be defined, measured on the scale of a person, the world, the Earth? Can time decrease and stretch, flow like a river, or rush like a high-speed train? The answer to these reflections grew into this work. I tried to express my answers in the plastic language of weaving.
Ariadna Donner
(Finland)
Title: Lively and Silent Winter, 2017, 161 x 143 cm
Photo: Ilkka Hietala
Ariadna Donner
I weave on a 3 meter high upright loom. The process begins with a couple of small pencil drawings and written notes. After weaving approximately 10 centimetres, I attach a black and white sketch behind the warp. During the weaving progress, this outline always grows and changes. Sometimes this happens at the same tempo as the threads are sliding through my fingers. There is a connection between me and the colours of the threads. This makes it easy for me to identify with my tapestries.
Anne Marie Egemose
(Denmark)
Title: Trails of soils – The Harvest, 2018, 80 x 350 cm
Photo: Erik Brandt
Anne Marie Egemose
A Tapestry, dark and luminous graphic tones - symbol of a harvested field.
Harvest
The Harvest is
Life.
Takes and gives,
In the Light
in the Dark.
Anne Marie Egemose
Jane Freear-Wyld
(United Kingdom)
Title: Reflect 2, 2020, 89 x 177
Photo: Jane Freear-Wyld
Jane Freear-Wyld
I absolutely love the process of weaving, watching a design grow and evolve. The design process began with a photo of a single pane of glass from a Shanghai skyscraper, followed by computer manipulation. That’s always a mystery – how can a click of a button change colours, shapes and patterns so completely?
Chrissie Freeth
(United Kingdom)
Title: Saint Catherine, 2019, 180 x 180 cm
Photo: Rob Janaway
Chrissie Freeth
My work is narrative, bold, unfussy and studded with personal symbolism. It is inspired by academic research of medieval tapestries but reimagined for contemporary relevance. At the loom I reshape and confront my own memories and seek to capture a more universal female experience.
Lise Frølund
(Denmark)
Title: Child, 2016, 110 x 140 cm
Photo: Anette Fuglsang
Lise Frølund
Will an image of a child materialize out of this tangle of threads of different material, colour, shape and gloss?
Will an image materialize on either side of the tapestry?
Carmen Groza
(Belgium)
Title: Kàra, 2019, 245 x 185 cm
Photo: André Leclercq
Carmen Groza
Questions about death, human dramas have repeatedly marked our time with a particular sensitivity.
The timeless presence of death, resonates with an ancient tradition. In his Odyssey, Homer mentions “beings that lose their colours, their shapes, their names, their traits, and their light”.
Kàra represents the human being as a whole; man in death is called a “head”, Kàra, but a head veiled with darkness, a faceless head.
That is what, in the living world, enables us to be seen and identified by others.
Birgitta Hallberg
(Denmark)
Title: Sunday Morning, 2016, 125 x 116 cm
Photo: Camilla Schrøder
Birgitta Hallberg
I'm a textile artist living in Denmark, born in Sweden. I often refer to the life and creatures in the beech woods from my childhood’s Sweden.
I weave my pictures and stories on a black warp. My tapestries grow from colours in wool, linen and cotton. I combine tapestry techniques with a very free use of the old rose path technique. It gives structure to colours and shapes.
I weave dreams from my childhood country. It is a journey to the garden of my childhood, inspired by the country of my childhood in Skåne, where my mother often would photograph me in the garden. These are the memories I want to retain in the journey to the brightly colored flowering garden of childhood.
Mette Hansen
(Denmark)
Title: Fragments, 2020, 193 x 166 cm
Photo: Jeanette Thorup
Mette Hansen
Since childhood I have walked along the stone filled shores of Denmark hunting for fossils. Subconsciously the eye learns to recognize lines, colors, patterns, shapes and shadows in the ever-changing surface of the beach.
A stone has many diverse expressions and is my source of inspiration. It can be twisted and turned in any direction it is multidimensional. I turn the pictures in these stones into watercolors, that in turn serves as the base for my tapestries.
Helena Hernmarck
(USA, invited guest)
Title: Up and Down Triptych, 1990, 170 x 170 cm
Photo: Norman McGrath
Helena Hernmarck
Broad watercolor brushstrokes move like waves across this tapestry triptych. The colors mingle and migrate from one panel to the next, lightening on the right to reveal the white paper beneath. The paper designs were creased on the diagonal to create three rhythmic shadows before they were enlarged and woven in Hernmarck’s signature tromp l’oeil technique.
Dorthe Herup
(Norway)
Title: Friendship, 2019, 177 x 195 cm
Photo: Tomas Moss
Dorthe Herup
Quote A.A. Milne
“Good friends can do everything together, but only the very best friends can do nothing together.”
Soile Hovila
(Finland)
Title: World of Contrast I, 2017, 162 x 130 cm
Photo: Henna Mitrunen
Title: World of Contrast II, 2018, 148 x 98 cm
Photo: Henna Mitrunen
Soile Hovila
I study visually the contrasts of the world, such as population density, wealth and the consequences of environmental destruction.
Trees and light play a central role in my works. I design by combining photos. I weave row by row, on the reverse and often sideways from the picture. I let the uncoloured linen yarn of warp be visible under wefts, because of its specific shining but muted hue.
Fiona Hutchison
(Scotland)
Title: Tide II, 2017, 150 x 125 cm
Photo: Michael Wolchover
Fiona Hutchison
Materials and techniques play an important role in the development of ideas. “Tide II” is part of a collection that explores the ebb and flow of sea, powerful bodies of water, that are constantly moving and changing This dangerous and unpredictable environment is also fragile and we must take care to look after it.
Feliksas Jakubauskas
(Lithuania)
Title: Red Dot, 2018, 130 x 151 cm
Photo: Arunas Baltenas
Feliksas Jakubauskas
How do geometric shapes affect man? What is the meaning of the language of geometric shapes? Looking at the simplest geometric shapes, people undergo changes that occur on both the physical and mental levels. Each shape works differently, the more so if has a different color. So, geometric shapes an integral and very important part of our being. They can be used for a more harmonious, conscious, mature and simply more interesting life. So, in these tapestries I tried to express various states of nature and my personal feelings, using geometric shapes, using colors and a combination of classical tapestry with Lithuanian folk weaving.
Aino Kajaniemi
(Finland)
Title: Understanding, 2019, 147 x 159 cm
Photo: Aino Kajaniemi
Aino Kajaniemi
My tapestries tell stories about the human being and life. In my art I depict human growth and life's complexity and emotions poetically and individually. I think about the questions of how a human being can find her/his place in the world, reverses, fears, need of support and dreams.
Inka Kivalo
(Finland)
Title: Fragrance, 2020, 160 x 100 cm
Photo: Aake Kivalo
Inka Kivalo
I am my own handwriting. I reflect myself and then start the work. I connect and like lightness.
Nancy Koenigsberg
(USA, invited guest)
Title: Light, 2011, 122 x 122 x 20 cm
Photo: Cathy Carver
Nancy Koenigsberg
Light was inspired by the artist’s curiosity about what one sees as light strikes a surface and is her interpretation of those events and effects. Light is composed of seven layers of coated copper wire woven in an open grid pattern on a frame loom. The layers are woven separately and combined to produce a work with actual as well as visual depth. Firmly attached to one another at the top, each layer shifts slightly as it falls from the rod, providing a complex web of interaction as light plays on the various layers. Each twist and juncture of the metallic warp and weft is another instance of the lively nature of the work and produces shadows and shimmers that change with the illumination it’s given and with one’s viewing position. The piece is exemplary of Koenigsberg’s signature style – offering simplicity becoming complexity that becomes complexity within simplicity.
Lis Korsgren
(Sweden)
Title: Morning Haze, 2017, 162 x 220 cm
Photo: Mark Harris
Lis Korsgren
Bridges are often beautiful pieces of construction, surrounded by sky, water, light and shadows. Porto slowly wakes up after an intensive night. The bridge in the city centre is not only a carrier of people, vehicles and cargo but also carry a huge amount of symbolic value. We constantly cross bridges during our lives both physically and symbolically. A bridge carry dreams and hope for a better life. Often, we hesitate whether to cross bridges or not; life is a constant worry about gained or missed opportunities.
Søren Krag
(Denmark-Norway)
Title: Untitled (Guilloché II), 2019, 125 x 125 x 300 cm
Photo: Søren Krag
Søren Krag
Krag produces work within a range of artistic disciplines including; image, sound, video, installation and weaving, with a special focus on utilizing electronic and digital tools. He is preoccupied with aesthetic ideas of symmetry and ornamentation, which have permeated the history of art, and which have wandered historically and geographically between different civilizations and cultural regions.
Katarzyna Lavocat
(France)
Title: Trias-2, 2008-2016, 234 x 200 cm
Photo: Woytek Konarzewski
Katarzyna Lavocat
The unprecedented value of tapestry is not to be found in the spiritual effect it can have, but the very visual nature of it as well as the feel of it to the touch, feeling the material’s three-dimensionality and its sensuality, a fact not to be undervalued in the world where virtual reality is expanding aggressively.
The tapestry conveys the value of dignity, its presence induces the necessity of calm and thoughtfulness.
Agneta B. Lind
(Sweden)
Title: Lookout, 2020, 122 x 120 cm
Photo: Agneta B. Lind
Agneta B. Lind
I am trying to abstract and isolate the water in nature and particularly it´s different conditions. That was my first intention. During the beginning of the pandemic when I was working with this art piece, I named it lookout. I could see when the weaving was growing the way we all live and should live under such conditions. Like small clusters.
Lindsey Marshall
(United Kingdom)
Title: Out of Darkness, 2020, 245 x 69 cm
Photo: Steve Watts
Lindsey Marshall
Concepts derive from text, spoken or written, serious or playful. The work is often shaped, either in its outline or 3 dimensionally and sometimes includes other techniques such as knotting.
Ann Naustdal
(Norway)
Title: The Forest Floor, 2020, 90 x 320 cm
Photo: Kim Müller
Ann Naustdal
Arid landscapes attract me. They can appear like barren wastelands, but are landscapes of biological, cultural and aesthetic richness. The texture is closely connected to nature's own processes with leaves, earth and twigs all intertwined. "The Forest Floor" relates to the aftermath of a forest fire, where the forest's circle of life starts its restoration. In the blackened landscapes light and sporadic, intensely colourful vegetation appears along with new seeds sprouting, making use of newly available nutrients. The seeds love the carbon rich soil that a fire leaves behind, seedlings pop up almost immediately and eventually grow into dense stands of trees.
Ann Nyberg
(Sweden)
Title: Free Falling, 2019, 159 x 156 cm
Photo: Peter Roy Kirchner
Ann Nyberg
I had a circle form and a colour as a starter on a large piece of paper. Then a contrast colour appeared and I knew there was progress.
I always follow the Inner road. Crayons give me direction. I can figure out the yarn while looking at crayon colours at a certain level. Some will change during the weaving process.
When the first part is done, I take the drawing with me to the weaving studio. The chosen colours are there waiting and the fulfilment of weaving starts. Interpretation follows fibre materials in different gross: such as wool, linen, silk and cotton yarn on a linen warp.
The feeling of freedom results in a colourful landscape with two main structures on the left side falling down. The closed white abstraction and the open one in the form of a human.
Gudrun Pagter
(Denmark)
Title: That’s it, 2020, 228 x 252, cm
Photo: Atelier Egtved
Gudrun Pagter
As simple as possible, only the necessary lines line up a spatial form.
The tapestry is woven in sisal, linen and wool.
Lívia Pápai
(Hungary)
Title: Way to Light, 2017, 180 x 180 cm
Photo: Tibor Dobor
Lívia Pápai
My creative concept was brought by an old epitaph from the City Museum of Nantong. The text of the female epitaph records the details of her life story in accordance with burial customs of the era. I used my own pictures, and elaborated my concept in a digital environment. The tapestry was formed through transitions of sharp positive-negative counterpointing.
Mercé Paytuvi
(Spain)
Title: Sequencies, 2020, 159 x 91 cm
Photo: Daniel Morales Paytuví
Mercé Paytuvi
I experience the pleasure of art mixing colors and unorthodox materials. This traditional tapestry causes a feeling of blurriness in order to sharpen your senses.
Gunilla Petersson
(Sweden)
Title: Labyrinth, 2018, 120 x 105 cm
Photo: Björn Hellström
Gunilla Petersson
“Labyrinth” for fledgelings
Time to leave the safety place and conditions, what a challenge and really a Labyrinth!
Relations-communication-reflection-love-anger-joy-sad-fantasy the list will be long. As in all my tapestries my interest is to create a serious, humorous and reflecting story and description of what we as human beings are talented and capable to.
The materials are wool on linen warp.
Marianne Poulsen
(Denmark)
Title: Road to Freedom, 2016, 383 x 255 cm
Photo: Tue Poulsen
Marianne Poulsen
My work is inspired by a newspaper article with photos showing a viaduct/road under reconstruction, with the headline: ”Road to Freedom will soon be open”.
I am often inspired by mythology, stories from the past, human tragedies etc., my tapestries consist of a personal, psychological, political and religious character. I try to create a dialogue within the picture, with a message, an appeal with a special interpretation in mind. Details are supposed to associate to forms that you can recognize as if they are familiar. So, by using the fantasy, each spectator can have his own experience, and make his own conclusion…
Jane Riley
(United Kingdom)
Title: In Suspension 2, 2020, 98 x 120 cm
Photo: Oliver Riley
Jane Riley
I have tried to capture the colour, transparency and beauty of seaweed in water. For some years now my inspiration has come from the coast, the longer I study the more fascinated I become.
Renata Rozsivalová
(Czech Republic)
Title: Geometry of Light and Darkness, 2020, 195 x 265 cm
Photo: Jaroslav Rajzík
Renata Rozsivalová
My tapestries are created on the basis of everyday experiences. They are connected to the reality of nature, universe, time, eternity and meaningfulness of our existence.
Tapestry Geometry of Light and Darkness depicts light penetrating through objects, forming flat composition of geometric abstract pictures evoking feelings of emptiness and hope.
Joanne Soroka
(Scotland)
Title: The Moon and Sixpence, 114 x 125 cm
Photo: Joanne Soroka
Joanne Soroka
The title of the tapestry refers both to its shape and its internal shapes, but also to the Somerset Maugham novel about a fictional artist based on Gauguin. I have used the type of colours Gauguin enjoyed, also using them in large blocks. The theme is "If you look at the ground in search of a sixpence, you don't look up, and so miss the moon." The sixpence is almost worthless, but seeing the moon can be uplifting.
Emma Nicole Straw
(United Kingdom)
Title: Tapestry Collage, 2019, 155 x 233 cm
Photo: Barney Hindle
Emma Nicole Straw
Exploiting the unpredictability and chaos created with inks, dyes and pigments, Straw creates abstract drawings, allowing the materials to disperse and evaporate revealing areas of deep colour and intricate ebb and flow marks.
All to be manipulated, interpreted, and refined through the translation of a tapestry. These complex compositions are meticulously thought over and considered, exploring the use of open warps, loops, and tufts to achieve the sense of depth, shape and colour found within the initial liquid drawings.
Kristin Sæterdal
(Norway)
Title: Space Debris, 2018, 200 x 260 cm
Photo: Anders Elverhøy
Title: Mother Ship, 2018, 185 x 310 cm
Photo: Gunvor Saltvik
Kristin Sæterdal
I make large tapestries focusing on various issues in society today. Technology is often a theme in my work, such as pollution of Space, surveillance, and the question can technology solve the global problems created by humans and save the planet. I love the making of a tapestry, building it up thread by thread as a manifest of hope.
Erika Tammpere
(Estonia)
Title: I See What I Hear, 2019, 240 x 220 x 90 cm
Photo: Karel Koplimets
Erica Tammpere
“I See What I Hear” presenting us an uncompromising glimpse of life without sight. In this artwork interpreting various means of communications, such as voice and hearing, music and emotions, touch and embrace.
Zane Vizule-Jakobsena
(Latvia-Denmark)
Title: Heritage of Grandmothers, 2019, 165 x 65 cm
Photo: Zane Vizule-Jakobsena
Zane Vizule-Jakobsena
Heritage from both of my grandmothers – one being a land-women and the other one making plenty of hand-woven works. Silently living and doing everyday things, they have inspired me with their love to hard work, handwork, good taste in colours and beauty.
My work is depicted pictures of my grandmothers, most from 1970s, and details from my mother’s mother’s woven works. Just as pictures and woven patterns twist trough the threads, so passes their lives symbolically through the years, leaving a good heritage of good values for next generations.