Curated by Jane Langley and Kathleen Mullaniff.

An exhibition by three British and three American contemporary visual artists at the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, London, 2004

Laurie Addis, Michelle Charles, Michelle Grabner, Jane Langley, Kathleen Mullaniff and Jennifer Wright

All art is an act of translation, but there is a tendency to see translation as a process which can only impoverish or misrepresent the original  – a process in which something is inevitably lost. But at its best, translation weaves together the essentials of the original with the implications of its new incarnation; it can infuse fresh associations, and suggest new interpretations, especially where something has been dulled by familiarity. This process – by which something is found in translation – is abundantly evident in this exhibition. Each artists has taken familiar forms, traditional methods and ‘found’ motifs and re-presented them in ways which enrich our understanding, confront our prejudices and preconceptions, and above all, compel us to re-examine the givens of those fraught oppositional categories, ‘art’  and ‘craft’. Each of the artists has produced work in response to material – either specific or generic – in the collections of MoDA, using a variety of media including digital technology, weave, print, painting and stitch.

 

Gill Saunders, January 2004, © M.O.D.A.