Matt Gale’s work examines systems and relationships, exploring unusual or unexpected pairings of partners as a means to reference the queerness of the natural world – that actually nature is far less binary than we might imagine.
… Practice-Based: On Smocking, Science and Sex
I stand in cold stacks. My hands run over the pale green boxes scored with pencil marks. I rummage. A syllabus, a letter and tangled endings. An under-stairs cupboard filled with pornography. S&M dyke night flyers with tea in the living room. Email trails: reaching out, and toward something…
… Practice-Based: Quilting the Lesbian Archive, Sarah-Joy Ford
Adejoke Tugbiyele (b.1977, New York, USA) is an award-winning, queer, black artist. Her work often comments on human rights issues around the world, and her own identity as a queer woman of Nigerian descent. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York where she continues to make artwork and engage in advocacy projects.
… Adejoke Tugbiyele’s Hybrid Forms and Second-Skins
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. This well-known aphorism can be easily applied to Lot Kessels’ Charleston Doll’s House, a miniaturised rendering of the historic East-Sussex home associated with the Bloomsbury Group (Fig. 1).
… The Charleston Doll’s House: “A home for whoever you want to be.”
LJ Roberts (b.1980) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and is known for large-scale textile installations, intricate embroideries, artist books, collages and sculpture. Their work investigates the overlaps of queer and trans politics, alternative kinships, narrative, and material deviance. Daniel Fountain speaks to LJ here about the relationships between craft, identity and queer theory, and how this manifests itself in their practice.
… LJ Roberts’ Queer Epics
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.
… Spotlight: Oz Bender’s Deconstructive Craft
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.
… Anne Jackson: The Witchcraft Series
Following a timeline from the Ice Age Venuses of the Paleolithic, the goddesses of Minoan, Ancient Egyptian, Old Norse and Ancient Greek cultures of the Neolithic Bronze Age to the present day Jane observed the diminution of the female in the human story. Her response was to create a series of textile sculptures.
… Jane Fairhurst: Wands, Fetishes for Uncertain Times & Women’s Work
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 a way to reflect upon my relation to this new place and also to experience more deeply the land around me.
… A Doorway In: My Own Way In
‘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.
… Machina Incantatii (Spell Machine) by Anna Nolda Nagele
‘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)
… ‘The Event of a Thread’: a recap of Weave It! an exhibition curated by Decorating Dissidence
Purpose-built to house the ‘Peckham Experiment’, The Pioneer Health Centre’s functionality and modern design went hand in hand.
… Pioneers in Peckham: Bauhaus Legacies in London
The work within the weaving workshop and beyond, was transformative and fundamental to the school’s success…
… Women of Bauhaus: Beyond the warp and weft…
How much Bauhaus is too much Bauhaus?
… Does the Bauhaus belong in a Museum?
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.
… The Chairs of Chandigarh…
decoratingdissidence.com 