Our spotlight this month is the emerging mixed-media artist Osgood (Oz) Bender who uses craft and material processes as a foundation to explore concepts of body modification…
Anne Jackson: The Witchcraft Series
My current body of work examines witch trials and witch-persecution, in European history, and as a metaphorical lens through which to explore some of the fears and prejudices of our own time. I know that the absolute truth of past events is inaccessible. All I am doing is reflecting my own fantasies, attitudes and prejudices, […]
Jane Fairhurst: Wands, Fetishes for Uncertain Times & Women’s Work
Art and Ethnography Jane’s approach to the production of art that refers to ancient or other cultures comes from an intention to firstly understand something of those cultures and this she does through reading. Sourcing books and information in various outlets including the internet, those books in turn referencing further reading, thus she gathers information […]
A Doorway In: My Own Way In
A Doorway In As I settled into my new routine, I began to explore the country, visiting Loch Lomond and the Hebrides, the Highlands and Orkney. While I felt such joy in each new place, I still had trouble connecting to the place-specific energy of the land. And so, I developed A Doorway In as […]
Machina Incantatii (Spell Machine) by Anna Nolda Nagele
‘Machina Incantatii’ (latin for ‘Spell Machine’) was conceived to explore the question of how digital tools can be used to create and introduce spiritual experiences by emulating a magical ritual of spell writing. Creation of individualised texts can inspire users to explore their thoughts and find answers within themselves through interpreting the short texts. By […]
Editorial: Bauhaus Continued
For this issue of Decorating Dissidence we wanted to reflect on last year’s centenary of the Bauhaus. Now at 101 years, the celebrations may be over but the movement’s legacy still offers much to be learned, developed and reflected on. Building on the themes of our exhibition Weave It! we want to create a space […]
‘The Event of a Thread’: a recap of Weave It! an exhibition curated by Decorating Dissidence
‘Something speaks to us, a sound, a touch, hardness or softness, it catches us and asks us to be formed’ – Anni Albers, ‘Material as Metaphor’ (1982) 2019 marked the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Bauhaus, an experimental German art school that sought to reimagine the role of art and design in everyday […]
Pioneers in Peckham: Bauhaus Legacies in London
Amongst the latest in Bauhaus Centenary exhibition offerings comes RIBA’s ‘Beyond Bauhaus: Modernism in Britain, 1933-66’, an innovative installation of archival materials arranged inside temporary columns with geometric peep-holes cut at varying heights. Anchored in the 1930s, the exhibition presents a rich survey of avant-gardism in British architecture and design, augmented by international trends and […]
Women of Bauhaus: Beyond the warp and weft…
There has been a noticeable shift, more recently, to recognise the women of the Bauhaus and to provide the space to critically engage with their production…
Does the Bauhaus belong in a Museum?
How much Bauhaus is too much Bauhaus? A question many Germans might have asked themselves this year as every street corner in every village attempted to prove a link modernism’s most famous institution.
The Chairs of Chandigarh…
In 1922, ‘Bauhaus in Calcutta‘ saw artists travel from Germany to India to exhibit work and sketches alongside modern Indian artists like Nandalal Bose and Sunayani Devi. In conversation with the Visva-Bharati school, founded by poet, musician and artist Rabindranath Tagore, it came at a time when Indian artists were seeking a modernist language outside […]
sweepRANT by Sarah Cameron
I don’t want to sweep the floor any moreI don’t want to sweep the floor anymoreI must have swept it 10 times todayI don’t want to sweep the floor anymore. It’s dull, monotonous, dreary, drabirksome, humdrum, nut-dummin’ banal.I havna nothing ‘gainst sweeping per seI quite like it actually;but to do it quite as much as […]
Navigating Cultural Liminality: Private Rooms by Ghada Amer
Offering a critique of imperialist thought, Edward Said’s Orientalism created a paradigmatic shift in understanding the relationship between Western (Occidental) and non-Western (Oriental) cultures. Yet Orientalism still pervades mainstream representations of non-Western cultures, which oscillate between intense fetishization and demonization, often in almost the same breath. See for example Dalia Dawood’s description of the Aladdin […]
Review: Fifty Works by Fifty British Women Artists 1900-1950
In 2015, the novelist Kamila Shamsie issued a provocative call to arms to publishers: let’s make 2018 the Year of Publishing Women. What would happen, Shamsie asked, if publishers refused to publish any books by men during the centenary of women’s suffrage in 2018? In the end, only one publisher took up her challenge: the […]
Performance: Cleaning Her
Though conceptualised for the sculpture park in Graz, the performance piece Cleaning Her by Martina Morger was first executed in Glasgow’s Merchant City in 2018. In the run-up to the performance, the concept for Cleaning Her evolved to relate to the industrial past of Scotland’s largest city more specifically. Historically a point of intersection for international merchants and local […]
