Woven piece no.13

A woven gobelin tapestry produced in direct response to the invitation by the Ildiko Dobranyi Foundation in Budapest and the Hungarian Institute of Culture to represent Great Britain and create a work for the Web of Europe Project.
I was asked to 'reweave and reinvent' a section of the 17th century tapestry in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest ‘Mercury Hands over the Infant Bacchus to the Nymphs’

This period of Tapestry weaving has never excited me in the same way as the Tapestry of the Middle Ages, an era of tapestry weaving which, for me, has never been surpassed.
For this project I decided to approach the tapestry as a flat and essentially decorative object. After a substantial period of non-weaving I found that the pleasurable process took over: the repetitious piling of one yarn on top of another, the hours of concentration and rhythm all fed into a general state of ‘flow’. The fact that I was caught up essentially in a copying exercise seemed (to me) to be acceptable given the aims of the project.

As a reluctant participant in the project I soon realised it's importance in confirming several lines of recent enquiry: slowness; making; materiality

Through this project I was able to question the relevance (if any) of woven tapestry in the world today. My interest lies in the act of weaving itself, and the implications it could have as an action (personal, social, political) in the twenty-first century. In order for Tapestry to exist in a meaningful way for me, I need to look beyond the confines of the medium.