the MAIWA BLOG: September 2016

Monday, September 26, 2016 No comments

Sunday, September 25, 2016 No comments

Saturday, September 24, 2016 No comments

Rosemary Crill speaking at the Maiwa School of Textiles

In Victorian England, during the heady summer of 1851, an estimated six-million people visited the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations” (better known as the Great Exhibition) under the vitreous rooftops of the Crystal Palace, during the six months of it tenure in Hyde Park. During this time it realized a profit of almost two-hundred thousand pounds, enough to purchase 96 acres of land in South Kensington and to fund the construction of what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum. This fund also gave birth to the Museum of History and Science, The Royal Colleges of Art, and Music and the Royal Albert Hall.

Today the V&A’s holds the greatest collection of Indian Textiles in the world. As Director Martin Roth pointed out in his introductory notes to The Fabric of India, it is surprising, therefore, that there had never been a major exhibition of them, nor had there been a comprehensive volume such as The Fabric of India.

Now, such an undertaking is never the work of one person. Nevertheless, there is one person who did have a pivotal role to play in bringing these textiles to public view and championing the importance of such an exhibition. That person is Rosemary Crill. She has recently retired from her position as Senior Curator, Asian Department, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Rosemary is a paradigm of modesty and understatement. A favourite trick of hers, which she uses to field a question about textiles, is to speak as if you were giving her the answer. “I don’t know ... South East India isn’t it? Northern Orissa perhaps? What do you think? An ikat from say ... well ... maybe early twentieth century judging by the dyes and colours ... does that seem right?”

Our mutual friend, textile collector and author, John Gillow once described her in the following words: She’s incredibly sharp. She knows absolutely everything, but she’ll act like she doesn’t know any of it.” This is not false modesty, rather it belies her deep conviction that what matters most is not her erudition, but the object itself.

Rosemary is a gifted curator, by which I mean she is able to organize objects into collections that make intuitive sense. She then augments this curatorial ability with deceptively simple prose. And so she uses her subtle gifts to give a voice to the object. We are made to feel that the textiles of history are speaking directly to us.

From the introduction to Rosemary Crill's lecture by Tim McLaughlin.

See also Maiwa's review of the Fabric of India Exhibition and Tim McLaughlin's review of the Fabric of India Book (some of which is repeated in this introduction).

Friday, September 23, 2016 No comments

Meet the Banjara through image and stitch.

OPENING NIGHT

Thursday September 22, 6-9pm

Free Admission
Exhibition runs until October 1, 2016

MONTE CLARK GALLERY

#105 - 525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

BANJARA is an exhibition of photography and textiles focusing on the semi-nomadic

Banjara tribe of India. Distant relations of the European Roma, the Banjara are a formidable

cultural presence beset by the forces of modernity.

For the Banjara, embroidery as cultural expression is worked within a set of oppositions:

the communal and the individual, the historic and the contemporary, the traditional and

the modern. Materials, motifs, colours, and execution are combined to create utilitarian

artifacts that have both talismanic and auspicious powers; works are made to act as

highly visible displays of wealth and artistic skill.

Tim McLaughlin’s photographs invoke the tensions of visual ethnography — the spectacle

of the other and the necessity of understanding the play of difference in the construction

of identity. Stylistically indebted to the early work of Irving Penn, the portraits

are often made on-site with a portable studio. The resulting decontextualization isolates

the subject and removes the touchstone of reference.

The Banjara, as an ethnic group, were the site of conflict between colonial and tribal

powers during the reign of the British Raj in India. Medieval merchants operating on a

grand scale, the Banjara controlled most inland transport routes through the deployment

of pack trains of up to one-hundred thousand laden oxen. Construction of railways and

paved roads ended Banjara autonomy and the group were criminalized by the British

in 1871. The Indian subcontinent, however, is far from homogenous and many Banjara

continue to live untouched by modern influences.

BANJARA is also the occasion for the North American release of the hardcover book

Textiles of the Banjara: Cloth and Culture of a Wandering Tribe by Charllotte Kwon and

Tim McLaughlin, Thames and Hudson, 2016.

CHARLLOTTE KWON is the owner of Maiwa Handprints and the director of the Maiwa

Foundation. She is a documentary filmmaker and author and is internationally recognized

as a specialist in natural dye use.

TIM MCLAUGHLIN is a photographer and author who has published works in the United

States, Canada, and Great Britain. His previous book, Portraits: Found and Taken

received a silver award in the 2014 Paris Photo Prize. His works have been reviewed in

the New York Times, the L.A. Times, and The Globe and Mail. His work has shown at Le

Mois de la Photo and he features in the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. For over

fourteen years he has collaborated with Charllotte on numerous Maiwa projects.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016 3 comments

Jenny Balfour Paul with the manuscripts of Thomas Machell - Photo Tim McLaughlin

Last night Jenny Balfour Paul took the audience through a crash course in the wonder of indigo. She then proceeded to an in-depth tour of the life of Thomas Machell and its strange and often uncanny parallels to her own life.

The evening was introduced by Tim McLaughlin. We reprint that introduction here:

As an introducer your main task is to say who someone is. This daunting form of micro-biography is actually impossible. It is a testament to the power of certain people’s prose that anyone believes them. I mean really, how can you encircle a life within such a small space, using only words to give it shape.

But the question of “who someone is” cannot be unasked. IN the curious among us it awakens an appetite. An expectation. A thirst for ... for what? What indeed could be a satisfactory answer to this question, the question of who someone is.

The question begins to gain momentum ... like a wooden boat pulled by the current on a wide, expansive river. Because the question of who someone is – is really the question of who we are.

I think tonight’s speaker, Jenny Balfour Paul understands this, perhaps better than any of us.

Jenny is a leading authority on indigo: its history, its use by cultures across the world, its varieties, and the unusual chemistry of its extraction, transport, trade and use. At Maiwa, when someone wants to know all about indigo we ask simply: have you read Jenny Balfour Paul’s book? The blue dependency that orchestrates her life is stronger than she is. As I think you will find out tonight.

The list of Jenny’s accolades and accomplishments is long so I will only tell you a few. She is a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and the Royal Asiatic Society, she is also an Honourary Research Fellow at Exeter University, And, in one of the unusual connections which seems to characterize her life, she found herself working with musician Yo Yo Ma on the Silk Road Connect project.

But who is she?

Permit me to answer this question by saying — Jenny is the most curious person I have ever met. She has a voracious curiosity. In conversation she can be almost predatory in her questioning. She has a profound inquisitiveness.

In the hallowed hallways of the British Library, Jenny was given a manuscript worthy of her curiosity. And that story of that manuscript on her life, is the story of Deeper than Indigo, and that story it is why she is with us tonight. Please join me in welcoming Jenny Balfour Paul.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016 No comments

Sunday, September 18, 2016 No comments

On September 14th Christine Mauersberger delivered her lecture A Stitch in Time. From the influence of family and a desire to work in the fibre arts to her many commissions and installations. Her lecture came at the conclusion of two workshops that left students inspired and hungry for more. Christine was clear that, for her, curiosity, drive, and a dedication to making carried the day.

Christine was introduced by Sheila Wex with a poetic meditation on the nature of Christins's work. We've had a few request for the text and Sheila has kindly obliged. Here it is:

"We’re all on a journey to discover who we are, what we’re here to express, and how we might enter the world with what we create. The 21st century is different from the 19th or the 15th, yet we can still learn form artists of the past. But the conversation we’re having is with the present moment, with our time and space."

From Making Art a Practice, Cat Bennett (And Christine is tucked away in these pages too.)

So, this evening is all about you, what you will learn and the deep connection of our souls with what we do with our hands……..

Where what we do simply, is simply beautiful.

Christine Mauersberger is here from Cleveland, Ohio to take us on this journey, the result of her journey of listening to her own depths and becoming connected to herself and surroundings, and then showing it in stitch.

Yes, she has won numerous awards, fellowships and grants.

Yes, she has even done installations in homes slated for demolition, so the transient nature of our lives and what we do is given added poignancy in that fragility.

Yes, her work is represented in many collections

And Yes, she has the degrees and training in graphic expression - but what she brings to us is far more.

Christine’s deep comfort as a child came from hearing her mother at the sewing machine. Everything was right with the world when that sound broke into her consciousness. Many of us here probably have like tales about mothers, mostly mothers, stitching, sewing, mending and our being able to easily find them by the sounds or quiet in our homes.

It is in the peace where Christine can listen and create - It is from that peace she speaks, works and teaches. And she has a deep sense of time closely aligned with that of the Indigenous Peoples on whose land we stand; the realization that time itself is timeless, inanimate; has no substance - no beginning - no end.

We have what we are given, that’s it.

Time is not a commodity, which can be saved, invested, spent or wasted.

And tied to time are Silvery Hours, which we have all encountered but possibly never named. We may just hear about those too.

So, we welcome Christine to MAIWA, to Vancouver, and to the West Coast, where in certain spots at certain times, we too have Silvery Hours.