ambi
Rabiya Choudhry | Fiona Jardine | Raisa Kabir | Hanneline Visnes
Friday 7 May – Saturday 29 May 2021
Tue to Sat: 11am - 6pm, Free but ticketed (1 hour visiting slots)
Booking will be available from late April via CCA website
Centre for Contemporary Arts, 350 Sauchiehall Street Glasgow G2 3JD
The title of the exhibition, ambi, is Punjabi for the pattern known in Scotland as Paisley Pattern. ambi also means 'both', allowing for multiple narratives and acknowledging that these works from the archive have diverse origins and appropriations.
This exhibition, a partnership between CCA and GSA, takes works from the textiles, fashion and costume holdings at The Glasgow School of Art Archives & Special Collections as its starting point. The GSA has specially commissioned four UK-based artists and designers – Rabiya Choudhry, Fiona Jardine, Raisa Kabir and Hanneline Visnes – to select one piece each and to track its histories in order to present a new story or work from it.
Pursuing a line of research connected with the manufacture of carpets late 19th and early 20th century, Fiona Jardine looks at the relationship between space, place and labour. Originally concerned with weaving lace in Darvel, Ayrshire, by 1898 the firm of Alexander Morton & Sons had established an enterprise in Killybegs, Donegal making hand-knotted carpets. Prominent architects and designers such as George Walton and C.F.A. Voysey produced designs for Morton which were worked up by women in Killybegs, and the name ‘Donegal’ became synonymous with carpets of the highest quality.
For her new work, 'Gather your spools, let your hair down for me. Gently. Here. Undo.', Raisa Kabir performs with a woven head of hair, responding to the textile geographies of labour between Kashmiri woven shawls, Paisley, Scotland, Textile Archives, and South Asian diasporic migration and displacement. This work acts as a consequent reminder of the colonial imposed borders and the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan.
Rabiya Choudhry is investigating the Paisley Pattern, (which historically has its origins in Ancient Babylon or Iran) with its unique teardrop or ‘boteh’ form. The word ‘boteh’ is Persian for ‘shrub or cluster of leaves’, and the seed like shape of paisley pattern is purported to represent fertility. Paisley pattern also became a bohemian emblem in the western world’s appropriation of it. Choudhry has collaborated with a textiles specialist to make small textiles from a series of new patterns she has designed.
Hanneline Visnes is researching the work of Dorothy Carleton Smyth [1880-1933]. The GSA Archives & Collections holds several costume designs by Smyth for Shakespeare's Macbeth and Wilde's Salome. In 1914, Smyth became Principal of Commercial Art at Glasgow School of Art, teaching miniature painting and the history of costume and armour. In 1933, she was offered, and accepted, the post of Director of the Glasgow School of Art, but tragically died of a brain haemorrhage, aged 52, before the appointment was made public. Visnes will respond to the costumes and characters created by Smyth in a series of new gouache drawings. Visnes will show her new cast of characters in paintings alongside Smyth's costume studies of theatrical casts.
This exhibition is co-curated by Jenny Brownrigg (GSA) and Sabrina Henry (CCA).
The Glasgow School of Art’s Archives and Collections are an outstanding resource for the study of art, design, architecture and art education. They comprise a wide range of material from GSA’s institutional archive, to artworks and architectural drawings, textile pieces, plaster casts, photographs and furniture. Holdings include a large number of items by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, giving the Archives and Collections one of the largest Mackintosh collections held in public ownership. They also hold a number of deposited collections from former staff and students which often contain preparatory work such as sketchbooks, drawings and samples as well as finished artworks, notebooks and diaries. Taken together, the collections provide an excellent record of the activities of the Glasgow School of Art since it was established in 1845.
The Archives and Collections are currently located at The Whisky Bond on Dawson Road, a 20-minute walk from GSA’s main campus. The Archives and Collections are currently closed to visitors due to the ongoing Covid-19 situation. However, information about their holdings can be viewed online at www.gsa.ac.uk/archives
