Boys who sew

Hew Locke, ‘Heir Apparent’, mixed media, 2002.

REVIEW

Crafts Council Gallery, London
5 February – 4 April

Reviewed by: Lucy Wilson

The idea of 'Boys who sew' immediately raises issues of gender, sexuality and identity. Textiles is such a traditionally female medium that an exhibition of textile works made only by men inevitably creates sexual and political tensions.

Work by seven international male artists who use fabric, stitch and fashion within their work are interestingly diverse: they vary from embroidery-with-a-twist by Saturo Aoyama, to video documentary by Fernando Marques Penteado and prisoners at Wandsworth Prison. They explore what it means as a man to express ideas through sewing. Curator Janis Jeffries has chosen works that embrace a variety of technical approaches to successfully demonstrate the current ideological debates within contemporary textiles made by men.

However, most of the artists (the show also includes Hew Locke, Craig Fisher, Ben Cook, Gregory Leong and Brett Alexander) come from a fine art background rather than a textile training and, although their ideas are strong, a lack of sensitivity to their chosen material is in some cases slightly disappointing. The potential of textiles – knitted, printed, constructed, woven or sculpted – could be demonstrated expansively in this exhibition. Yet sometimes the actual crafting – the quality of fabric or production of a video – might be better.

Conversely, some pieces are impeccably made using modern technologies to address the debate between fine art and craft head-on. Saturo Aoyama is the only artist who makes sewing the focus of his work in a literal way, almost neurotically embroidering images of people and places on to fine organza using a sewing machine. He challenges the idea that craft should be handmade: sewing with an embroidery hoop is a typically female 'craft' technique and rarely one associated with men or sewing machines.

Ben Cook draws from fine art rather than craft history. His large abstract canvases appear bisected with wide, free brushmarks, but on closer inspection the marks are screenprinted repeat patterns, hinting at the mechanisation of the textile industry. Such threads run throughout the show: handmade versus machined, art versus craft, repeat versus one-off. Perhaps the most obvious thread, however, is the issue of identity, both cultural and sexual. The form and pattern of Australian Gregory Leong's fabrics are borrowed from traditional Chinese dress and sewn into with Western mass-produced tourist memorabilia, alluding to dialogue and disharmonies between cultures and sexes. The resulting clothes combine male, female, Eastern and Western qualities that jostle with one another for attention.

Cultural clashes also come to a head in Hew Locke's sculptures. Menacing cultural connotations in his hybrid figures contrast with brightly coloured, homely bits of English crochet or silk flowers he finds in pound shops. Craig Fisher also uses the domestic associations of textiles to offer the viewer a false sense of security. His soft, fantastical Oldenburg-esque sculptures (based on objects associated with 'boys' – radios, guns and bombs) appear luxurious and offer a commentary on our fantasies as consumers. Clear and Presentable Danger, three cartoon-like grenades made from stuffed oriental damask, raises a timely debate; but the chosen fabric itself is perhaps not quite exquisite enough to offer comfort that the use of textiles might be attempting to induce.

Throughout the exhibition, the issues raised by the artists successfully rise above underlying debates about fine art or craft, offering a fresh and playful view of what using a material with heavily ingrained historical, cultural and gender connotations can mean. Yet, because it draws attention to the fact that all the artists use one medium, the love of 'sewing' or material needs to be as evident as the connotations of being a 'boy who sews'.

INTERFACE

REVIEW

Boys who sew

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