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| 'Lacing Space (detail)', Piper Shepard |
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| 'Moucharabieh', Annie Bascoul, photo courtesy of Crafts Council |
“Lost in Lace” is an exhibition of works dedicated to exploring different interpretations of lace. Twenty international and UK artists are showing their pieces at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery; among them are Michael Brennand Wood, Piper Shepard and Reiko Sudo. What I noticed immediately about the exhibition was that it had a large variety of individual works; while some pieces were obviously inspired by lace, such as ‘Moucharabieh’ by Annie Bascoul, others were fairly abstract like Naomi Kobayashi’s ‘Cosmos series’ which was based on the spaces between lace. Cosmos series, Naomi Kobayashi, 2011.
One of my favourite pieces was “After the Dream” by Chiharu Shiota; her work focused on the lines created by the multiple strings which were woven together like lace. Eerie white dresses were suspended in the centre of the room behind a web of black; I thought this looked really haunting and dreamlike, like the title suggests.
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| "After The Dream", Chiharu Shiota |
“My installations with clothes always refer to the clothes as a second skin, which carry the memories of the people who wore these clothes.”
Chiharu Shiota
While the graphic, geometric shapes created by the overlapping lines were my main attraction to the piece, I appreciated it even more after reading the meaning behind it as it gave the work a deeper meaning besides being a visual representation of lace. It was interesting to read about the artist’s practice and how she weaves her feelings, literally, into her work: “If I weave something and it turns out to be ugly, twisted or knotted, then such must have been my feelings when I was working.”
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