Take Time: Cheryl Thornton, Daniel Edwards, Diana Wood Conroy, Dimity Kidston, Ema Shin, Patsy Payne, Rachel Hine, Suzanne Knight, Tim Gresham, Valerie Kirk. Craft ACT. Until July 6.
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Take Time is an exhibition by artists who use tapestry as a medium in their art practice.
The artists' works are accompanied by drawings and paintings that provide an insight into their creative process. This insight brings a deeper understanding of the artist's motivation.
In Diana Wood Conroy's tapestry Earth Archive 11: from the site of Soli, Cyprus, the artist brings together in a poignant way the personal loss of her mother and the uncovering by archaeologists of a mosaic path once used by pilgrims when the artist was in Cyprus on a dig.
Patsy Payne's suite of tapestries and drawings explore the intricacies of the hearts of sea creatures perhaps drawing analogies with human physiology and our commonality.
Ema Shin's textile sculpture Soft Alchemy (Fertile Heart) is a network of woven and tangled fibres graphically depicting the heart's complexity.
Daniel Edward's suite of small jewel-like tapestries chart in bright vivid colours and patterns the valleys and lower slopes of the Nilgir Hills in Tamil Nadu (Southern India).
These intensely conceived works seem larger in concept than the small tapestry format they inhabit and would have a dramatic impact if also developed on a larger scale.
Valerie Kirk's works are modelled on fossils. Her subtly coloured images in gouache, inks and indigo dyes translate directly into her delicately woven and sensitively conceived tapestries.
Rachel Hine's series of watercolours and tapestries reveal the close links between her imagery and choice of expression. Jeremy in a Jumper is a work in its own right but also relates to the tapestry with the same image. The cross references between the medieval Lady and the Unicorn tapestries and contemporary idioms are amusingly narrated both graphically and in tapestry.
Cheryl Thornton's small tapestry squares are examples of how the weaving process can be used to chart subtle variations in colour, pattern and texture.
Tim Gresham's three striking tapestry works Meld, Flux and Reverb are larger in format. Their geometric abstract designs in a restricted colour range play with subtle changes in weave, pattern, and colour to create optical illusions of depth and movement that animate their surfaces.
Both Dimity Kidston and Suzanne Knight have expanded the traditional tapestry concept.
Kidston's work is an expressive and inventive use of various textile practices.
The imagery in Time to Grow - a woven tapestry square - suggests the caterpillar stage of growth. Its companion work, Time to Travel, is a collection of colourful butterfly sculptures made from wire, bound cotton and plastic bags that as if released from the cocoon "fly" in a frantic joyful flight across the wall of the gallery.
Suzanne Knight's series What dreams are made of are among the most inventive and intriguing works in the exhibition. Knight has woven only the cut-out shapes of kitchen bowls and colanders and arranged them as if on a shelf. Some of the objects suggest a three-dimensional perspective, others are flat designs. Their soft, muted colours and tactile surface textures make them very attractive.
This is an inspiring exhibition that explores how contemporary artists still make art utilising traditional skills - but in new and inventive ways.