Mirabilia Domestica
05/07/10 13:14 Filed in: Exhibitions
Looking forward to the summer ahead, I will be assisting textile artist and researcher Solveigh Goett on the final stint of her PhD, to install her exhibition of Mirabilia Domestica. I’m excited to be apart of this project, to get more hands on and get my teeth into textiles with a narrative, and inspiration for my own textile art exploration.
Since the beginnings of humanity textiles have accompanied us on our journey through life: not only our bodies and environments, but also our memories, feelings and thoughts are clothed. From socks and lucky underpants, sheets and blankets, curtains and jumpers, to uniforms and flags, beer tents and parachutes, telephone wires and fibre-optic cables, we live in a world heavily layered with textiles, a truly world wide web: without textiles human life is unimaginable.
Intrigued by the extraordinary power the most ordinary fabrics hold to evoke memories and capture emotions, textile artist and researcher Solveigh Goett has collected materials and stories, made assemblages, memory boxes, books and many other hybrid, quirky and whimsical things to create a cabinet of textile wonders that aims to entice the narrative imagination, to move, surprise and enchant its visitors.
Mirabilia Domestica celebrates the small things in life, so often overlooked by force of habit, yet so deeply embedded in the stories of our life. Like the cabinets of curiosities of early modernity, the predecessors to museums and galleries, Mirabilia Domestica is a densely packed space that doesn’t reveal all its treasures at a glance. There are boxes and drawers to be opened and their content to be explored by the curious eyes, minds and hands of the visitors, who rather than being kept at a distance are invited not only to look, but also to touch, smell and listen.
Breaking the touch taboo that dominates art exhibitions and museum displays, Mirabilia Domestica not only permits visitors to give in to their desire to feel what they see, but positively encourages them to engage through their senses with the textures of the work, to touch and to be touched. Such sensory exploration beyond the visual will enrich the visitors’ experience in unexpected ways, and also provide points of attachment for those who through loss of sight are often excluded from enjoying the visual arts.
Mirabilia Domestica: the textile self re/collected is part of a practice-based research project that links threads of experience and lines of thoughts to investigate the role of everyday textiles in the stories of our lives.
The project website serves as an on-line catalogue of the installation as well as leading the visitor into a wider network of textile matters, memories and metaphors.
For more information, please contact the artist solveigh_goett@hotmail.com
Since the beginnings of humanity textiles have accompanied us on our journey through life: not only our bodies and environments, but also our memories, feelings and thoughts are clothed. From socks and lucky underpants, sheets and blankets, curtains and jumpers, to uniforms and flags, beer tents and parachutes, telephone wires and fibre-optic cables, we live in a world heavily layered with textiles, a truly world wide web: without textiles human life is unimaginable.
Intrigued by the extraordinary power the most ordinary fabrics hold to evoke memories and capture emotions, textile artist and researcher Solveigh Goett has collected materials and stories, made assemblages, memory boxes, books and many other hybrid, quirky and whimsical things to create a cabinet of textile wonders that aims to entice the narrative imagination, to move, surprise and enchant its visitors.
Mirabilia Domestica celebrates the small things in life, so often overlooked by force of habit, yet so deeply embedded in the stories of our life. Like the cabinets of curiosities of early modernity, the predecessors to museums and galleries, Mirabilia Domestica is a densely packed space that doesn’t reveal all its treasures at a glance. There are boxes and drawers to be opened and their content to be explored by the curious eyes, minds and hands of the visitors, who rather than being kept at a distance are invited not only to look, but also to touch, smell and listen.
Breaking the touch taboo that dominates art exhibitions and museum displays, Mirabilia Domestica not only permits visitors to give in to their desire to feel what they see, but positively encourages them to engage through their senses with the textures of the work, to touch and to be touched. Such sensory exploration beyond the visual will enrich the visitors’ experience in unexpected ways, and also provide points of attachment for those who through loss of sight are often excluded from enjoying the visual arts.
Mirabilia Domestica: the textile self re/collected is part of a practice-based research project that links threads of experience and lines of thoughts to investigate the role of everyday textiles in the stories of our lives.
The project website serves as an on-line catalogue of the installation as well as leading the visitor into a wider network of textile matters, memories and metaphors.
For more information, please contact the artist solveigh_goett@hotmail.com
Mirabilia Domestica: the textile self re/collected
www.mirabilia-domestica.co.uk
7 August - 29 August 2010
Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture
Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts, EN4 8HT
www.moda.mdx.ac.uk/
Tuesday to Saturday, 10am - 5pm. Sunday, 2pm - 5pm. Closed on Monday.