Exhibition Reviews 3

Pauline Burbridge at the Quilt Museum in York.

My first point I’m going to make about quilting is that I made a patchwork quilt when I was 17 and it was a crazy mix of anything (including a wool jumper!) because I didn’t know any better. I am not a fan of the current trend for machine stitched quilts made from rolls of bought material, so I was unsure how I would feel about this exhibition. In the event I liked the quilts Pauline Burbridge produced, by the end she had moved away from preplanned blocks and instead was using more painterly techniques and much freerer stitching. My favourite was actually a commercial piece which was very “graphic” to look at.

I also enjoyed the smaller Durham quilting exhibition. I like the look of the single colour quilts. Finally I discovered the Japanese technique of SASHIKO stitching in the shop.

The First Cut in Manchester

or what I want from an exhibition

Manchester Art Gallery

I entered this exhibition in a calm, detached, thoughtful frame of mind. But after a couple of minutes I found myself running around like a child, full of wonder and delight.

“Look! I’m in a giant forest!”

“Look! The tiny man on the mountain!”

“Look! The tiny tree made out of the fast food bag!”

It struck me that this is what I want from an exhibition, not to walk around making a critical analysis, but to be excited and thrilled like a  child. This exhibition made this happen for me straight away. One of the first exhibits was  “Wonder Forest” by Manabu Hangai, I started looking thinking “mmmm, interesting tree forms” when I suddenly realised it felt like being in a giant forest. The whole exhibition played like this with scale, many things were really tiny, some very big. There was lots of work here I could mention but for me the most thought provoking thing of the day was a quote on a wall “children destroy things to understand them”. I was thinking about this and I felt this was one of my issues with textiles, the making of beautiful, finished things.

I feel I am still at the destroying stage. I want to mess about with threads and surfaces,  Maybe one day I will be able to produce something lovely and polished and finished, but I’m not done making a mess yet.