Lines & Lineage | Catalogue | July 2017

LINES& LINEAGE

Introduction 2

Jo Barker 4

Sara Brennan 10

Susan Mowatt 20

LINES& LINEAGE Three Scottish Tapestry Weavers 5-29 July 2017

16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ +44 (0) 131 558 1200 mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk www.scottish-gallery.co.uk Cover: Jo Barker, Swirl, 2016 (detail) Inside front cover: Jo Barker’s selected yarns and bobbins for Swirl, 2016

LINES& LINEAGE Introduction The Scottish Gallery is delighted to present Lines & Lineage which brings together three Scottish tapestry weavers: Jo Barker, Sara Brennan and Susan Mowatt. All three trained at Edinburgh College of Art and continue their studio practice in Edinburgh today. Each artist in their own distinct way explores colour, tone and material. All three featured artists have a conceptual and abstract approach to their medium which is bold and beautiful and their tapestries are a sensual as well as a visual experience. Weaving is a slow pace medium within a fast pace world, inviting the viewer to pause for a moment.

We felt it was important during our 175th year to acknowledge and pay homage to the ancient craft of tapestry, a medium which is part of our Scottish heritage, by presenting three of the most innovative artists currently living and working in Scotland. In recent years, the Cordis Prize for Tapestry, held at the Royal Scottish Academy annually, has highlighted the talent that exists in this country and Lines & Lineage continues this dialogue by championing contemporary tapestry.

The Scottish Gallery is grateful to Jo Barker, Sara Brennan and Susan Mowatt and we thank Angela McClanahan-Simmons for the following foreword.

The Scottish Gallery

Lines & Lineage, Dr Angela McClanahan-Simmons At first sight, a ‘tool’ still suggests a possible encompassment by the maker and user who determines its use. Yet our theories of culture already tell us that we perceive uses through the tools we have at our disposal.

Organism and machine are not connected in a part/totality relationship, if the one cannot completely define the other.’

Marilyn Strathern, Partial Connections, 2004 The process of tapestry making simultaneously folds in a number of human processes; from the performative act of weaving, to the application of the intricate, bodily skill required to weave, to the entirety of the process as a form of production of thought itself. Tapestries are a form of art that defies rigid, medium-specific categorization, doing so by raising a number of questions about the nature of contemporary art itself, including the value and/or fetishisation of ‘skill’ and objects in an age of automation, and by being as much concerned with the process of making and its social, cultural and temporal dimensions as with the end product.

The anthropological dimensions of the works that appear here are also at the centre of debates that have and continue to be the focus of how human beings work with and on materials, and how those materials in turn impact on human beings, the evolution of their bodies and cognition, the role of material culture in the production of human relations, the way in which the separate objects embody sociality, and so on.

The Lines and Lineage exhibition is thus not a ‘finished product’, but rather, a proposal, in which materials of various kinds (yarns, threads, natural and artificial fibres) have been brought together with skills of particular

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sorts (drawing, digital imaging, weaving, performance) both as individual objects-in-themselves, all of which can stand alone and be taken on their own merit, but which also generate questions about the mediums in which they were produced, how they might be viewed as in dialogue with one another, and how each artist’s mode of working (and the individual tapestries) can be compared and contrasted to one another.

Art as Intermedia As art objects, the tapestries in Lines and Lineage all engage in what might be referred to as ‘intermedia’ art; work that intentionally operates within, yet also between and beyond medium specific categories of production.

Tapestries are not designed simply to invite a gaze, but rather, may have a functionality beyond art (perhaps to act as insulation), or in the case of this exhibition, to invite viewers to consider relations between the maker and their tools (some ‘analogue’, like pencils that prepare the images that the tapestries will be woven against, some digital, including the computers that generate those images rather than drawing them). Jo Barker, Sara Brennan and Susan Mowatt all intentionally ‘muddy the waters’ of disciplinary purity by incorporating different kinds of skills; both artistic and drawn from wider human actions into tapestry making, retaining both the specificity of the art, but also by drawing attention to the ways in which those processes draw on other skills and ways of working from outside the ‘typical’ weaver’s toolkit.

Tools, Lines + Relationality ‘What do walking, weaving, observing, singing, storytelling, drawing and writing have in common? The answer is that they all proceed along lines of one kind or another.’

The anthropologists Marilyn Strathern and Tim Ingold frequently refer to weaving as an important human activity in the study of social and cultural relations and production. Their anthropological studies over the last three decades or so place it at the centre of debates about how we might conceive of the way in which skill might both produce and reproduce our relations with one another, with the wider world, and how we understand and indeed, ‘make’ that world.

Strathern views the activities we engage in as always ‘partial’ connections. She discusses how both the tool and the person using it enter into a mutual relation of production, in which they both matter equally in the process of making. The tool produces the maker as much as the maker marshals the tool in production.

Ingold insists on the unfolding between makers’ skills and the materials they use as leaving traces; ‘lines’ that twist and turn and follow a journey through the world in which people and materials come together in time and place temporarily to produce a map of worldly activity.

How might tapestries be understood as ‘maps’ of time and place?

How do they produce ‘lines’ of connection between materials, places and people?

These questions go to the heart of contemporary art production, and are profound angles through which to understand and question how Lines and Lineage situates tapestry in the contemporary world.

Dr Angela McClanahan-Simmons

Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History, 2016 3

JO BARKER b.1963

Jo Barker originally trained at Edinburgh College of Art and works from her studio in Edinburgh whilst teaching as a lecturer at Glasgow School of Art. Exhibiting both nationally and internationally, Jo most recently won The Cordis Prize for Tapestry in 2016.

Jo’s initial abstract designs are collaged together on computer from a combination of hand painted, drawn and inky marks. Colours are arranged in blocks, pools and smudges in overlapping layers. Employing this flowing way of designing is in complete contrast to the slow and intensive process of weaving. Wool, cotton and embroidery threads each have differing colour qualities. Combined, they offer a richness and depth of hue that continues to enchant, along with tapestry’s unique sensibility of surface texture and material construction.

‘A love of working with my hands: drawing, painting and making things; plus a long-term interest in colour are essentially at the heart of what I do. My compositions employ a range of marks, shapes and patterns which have evolved over a number of years, with recurring themes of ellipses, circles, halos; borders, edges and layers, creating a sense of movement and depth of field enhanced by reactions of particular colour combinations. The finished images are consciously abstract and ambiguous. I want to create a sense of something as opposed to an identifiable object or picture.’

Public Collections include: Victoria & Albert Museum, London The House of Lords, London National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle Scottish Executive, Edinburgh BUPA, London City University, London Bank of China, London Selected Publications: 2015 Contemporary International Tapestry, Carol K Russell – Schiffer Publishing Ltd 2012 Textiles: The Art of Mankind, Mary Schoeser – Thames & Hudson 2011 Tapestry Weaving: Design and Technique, Joanne Soroka – Crowood Press 2011 Tapestry: A Woven Narrative – Black Dog Publishing 2010 British Textiles: 1700 to the Present – V&A Publications 1996 Art Textiles of the World: Great Britain, vol I – Telos

Jo Barker, 2017

Jo Barker in her Edinburgh studio weaving Ripple, 2017 5

‘This tapestry is part of an on-going series of works exploring qualities of light; contrasting tones of dense dark inky pools and shimmering layers of rich colour.

There is always a feeling of movement – floating, sinking, spinning.

I make designs in an intuitive way building up layers of drawn or painted marks and gestures. I wait for a feeling of excitement, when I know that the image is right and is then ready to weave.’

Jo Barker, 2017

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Jo Barker Swirl, 2016 wool, cotton, embroidery threads, 75 x 75 cms 6

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‘The designing stage is a crucial part of the making process.

Having made a series of painted marks on paper with inks, watercolours or acrylics, they are scanned into the computer and digitally manipulated to create compositions with layers of colour in pools and washes.

The finished design is then translated into a woven image using wool, cotton, linen and embroidery threads. Whilst the design is backlit and illuminated on the computer screen, the tapestry takes on its own character when these colours become woven yarns, absorbing the light.

It results in dense dark black velvety tones; the layers of colour washes are embedded in different yarn combinations.

The design has been a guide. The tapestry takes on its own life.’ Jo Barker, 2017

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Jo Barker artwork design for Ripple, 2017 final tapestry measures 75 x 75 cms 8

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SARA BRENNAN b.1963

Sara Brennan originally studied tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art. Her work is an unspoken response to the landscape. Using a refined and reduced approach to colour and form, her work takes two routes; weaving either from her drawings or reacting and responding in smaller works to yarns as they are placed directly next to each other. Sara Brennan obsessively explores the meetings that occur through the surface quality and by a manipulation and an exploitation of the line. She has exhibited internationally and her work is held in numerous public collections. Sara was shortlisted for the Cordis Prize for Tapestry in 2015 and received the Creative Scotland Artistic Development Award in 2016.

‘Old Yellow Band V (cat. 3) and Odd Yellow Bands I, II and III (cat. 4), are part of a new ongoing body of work that explores the relationships and meetings that occur when the ‘old yellow’ cotton yarn is placed next to a different tone of black, grey and white. These ‘tones’ are also woven in different types of yarn – wools, linens and cottons. The yellow is an old cotton that I’ve used before and I have returned to it in a purer form. If you look closely at the tapestries you can see a small line of a contrasting colour placed next to the yellow band; defining the relationship between the tones.’

Sara Brennan, 2017

‘I work from a series of drawings and paintings, often repeatedly exploring the translation of a surface or mark into tapestry. I also work as a direct response to the reaction and relationship between yarns, with a disciplined and restrained approach to colour, tone and form. Choosing each yarn is as important to me and the tapestry as making the original drawing. The yarn must work to help balance and convey the feel and mood. It is vital in the interpretation of the drawing, bringing the tapestry to life.’

Sara Brennan, 2017 Public Collections include: Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums HBOS Headquarters, Edinburgh The Scottish Parliament Building, Edinburgh Shipley Art Gallery

Sara Brennan in her Edinburgh studio, 2017 Photo: Norman MacBeath 11

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Sara Brennan Old Yellow Band V, 2017 cotton, linen and wool, 14 x 11 cms Photo: Shannon Tofts 12

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Sara Brennan Odd Yellow Bands I, II and III (triptych), 2017 cotton, linen and wool, 19 x 16 cms each Photo: Shannon Tofts 13

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Sara Brennan Small Odd Yellow Vertical I, 2017 cotton and wool, 15 x 15 cms Photo: Shannon Tofts 14

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Sara Brennan Small Grey, Blue and Brown Verticals (triptych), 2016 cotton, linen and wool, 10 x 10 cms each Photo: Shannon Tofts 15

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Sara Brennan Small Odd Yellow Vertical II and III (diptych), 2017 cotton and wool, 15 x 15 cms each Photo: Shannon Tofts 16

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Sara Brennan Broken White Band With New Grey, 2011 cotton, linen and wool, 78 x 62 cms Photo: Shannon Tofts 18

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SUSAN MOWATT b.1967

Originally from Perth, Susan Mowatt studied Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art, before completing her Master of Fine Art in Tapestry. After graduating she worked in the Frankische Gobelin Manufactur in Bavaria and later in the Victorian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne, Australia as an invited weaver on the Federation Tapestry. Susan is currently Programme Director of Intermedia at Edinburgh College of Art. Interested in the act of weaving itself, Susan’s work has included live performances of weaving and unweaving in a gallery space (during a solo show at GalleryGallery, Kyoto, 2012) and an exploration of weaving through other media including drawing and moving image.

Exhibiting both nationally and internationally, Susan has been the recipient of numerous awards and most recently won The Cordis Prize for Tapestry in 2016.

Public Collections include: The City of Edinburgh Council Perth Museum and Art Gallery North Church, Perth Bank of Scotland Ildiko Dobranyi Foundation Selected Publications: 2011 Homing, a book of Poetry and Drawings (with Dr Paul Hullah), published by Word Power Books, Edinburgh 2008 Kabloom, with John Brown and Davy Henderson, The Caseroom Press 2002 Unquenched, Book of Haiku and Images (with Dr Paul Hullah, Okayama University, Japan), published by Afterdays Press

‘Weaving for me is thinking: a place where the past, present and future come together in one action.

For some time, I have been weaving and unweaving lines, placing the emphasis on the process rather than the end product. Sometimes the lines are reused in works and at other times they just unravel, allowing the yarn to return to the bobbin. This ancient process continues to inform the way I see things: everything woven together.’

Susan Mowatt, 2017

Susan Mowatt, performance piece at GalleryGallery, Kyoto, 2012 Photo: J Kanzaki 21

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Susan Mowatt Grey Lines, 2017 wool, linen, cotton, polyester thread, silk, 60 x 40 cms 22

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Susan Mowatt Grey Spots Rising, 1997 cotton, wool, mohair, silk, polyester, linen, 28 x 22 cms 24

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Susan Mowatt White Spots Falling, 2007 cotton, wool, mohair, silk, polyester, linen, 28 x 22 cms 25

Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition LINES & LINEAGE 5 – 29 July 2017 Exhibition can be viewed online at www.scottish-gallery/linesandlineage ISBN 978 1 910267 62 2 Printed by Allander The Scottish Gallery would like to thank Dr Angela McClanahan-Simmons for her introductory essay.

All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers.

16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ +44 (0) 131 558 1200 mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk www.scottish-gallery.co.uk Right: Susan Mowatt, performance piece at GalleryGallery, Kyoto, 2012 Photo: J Kanzaki 26