Latest Exhibition – OBS

The Old Big School Gallery in Tonbridge is where my current touring one-man exhibition is being displayed. Thanks very much to all at Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre, Cwmbran for setting up this tour and also to all those involved at the OBS Gallery for installation, maintenance and promotion throughout. The exhibition runs until 3rd March, 2024 and I will be giving a talk/presentation on Monday evening 26th February.

Photos below show what a beautiful space the gallery is and thank you again to Russell Harper of @harperphoto for the images he took.

: OBS entrance

: OBS Gallery

: Alastair Duncan – Interactive Tapestry Weaving. ©harperphoto

: Alastair Duncan – Interactive Tapestry Weaving. ©harperphoto

: Metamorphosis

: Alastair Duncan – Interactive Tapestry Weaving. ©harperphoto

: Alastair Duncan – Interactive Tapestry Weaving. ©harperphoto

: Alastair Duncan – Interactive Tapestry Weaving. ©harperphoto

: Alastair Duncan – Interactive Tapestry Weaving. ©harperphoto

: Dialogue

Interactive Tapestry Weaving Exhibition

So last week I delivered my interactive tapestry weaving for exhibition at Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre in Cwmbran, South Wales. I have also now set up my loom with my current tapestry on it which I will be working on during the exhibition.

The opening for the exhibition is on Friday 24th June between 5 and 7 pm and all are welcome. I will be in the gallery on Saturdays and Mondays to work on my current interactive tapestry but please confirm I will be there if you are planning on a visit and expect me to be there. The exhibition continues until 20th August.

tapestry, weaving, loom, exhibition — from the PUP – Illusion on the loom

exhibition, interactive, tapestry, weaving, Llantarnam Grange — from the PUP – Illusion on the loom

Some of the tapestries are interactive through touch or proximity which will trigger audio clips, others use QR codes to link to soundscapes I have developed for those tapestries. Other pieces are interactive through touch which simply creates movement in the work itself. Come along and enjoy!

Interconnections

So here I am in Scotland . . .

. . . but recently I was in Ireland where I was honoured to have been invited to open the Interconnections 4 tapestry weaving exhibition of Irish and Scottish tapestry artists.

Interconnections 4 at Roscommon Arts Centre

I was also asked to be the keynote speaker at the Fine Art Weaving/ Fibre Art Symposium held at the the same time.

It was all part of the Roscommon Fibre Art Festival which included another tapestry weaving exhibition by the CTA – Contemporary Tapestry Artists Ireland – at King House in Boyle.

All in all it was a most exciting return to Ireland for me after a number of years and as I was staying in a house with four other tapestry artists, we had an intensely tapestry weekend and it was fantastic.

Huge thanks and congratulations to Frances Crowe https://francescrowe.com/ and Joan Baxter http://joanbaxter.com for organising this event.

The exhibition in Ireland continues until 14th May at Roscommon Arts Centre https://roscommonartscentre.ie/event/interconnections-4/ and it will then be travelling to Weston Park in Shropshire https://www.weston-park.com/events/category/exhibitions/ from June 4th to August 30th so anyone in England and Wales has a good chance of seeing the exhibition and I highly recommend it.

Also during this time (25th June – 20th August) I will have an exhibition of my own work at Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre in Cwmbran where many of the tapestries will be https://llantarnamgrange.com/ interactive with audio being triggered by the actions of the viewer.

Metamorphosis in action at the Heallreaf 3 exhibition.

So you have two excellent reasons now to visit this part of England and Wales and update yourself on what is happening in the contemporary tapestry weaving world in theUK and Ireland. Don’t miss out.

New Tapestries and Coming Out of Lockdown

Two new tapestries finished and an exhibition re-opening – can’t be bad!

Firstly, the exhibition that is re-opening and running for an extended period is the Fabric of the North show at Kirkleatham Hall Museum in Redcar. It opens again on 18th May and will run until the end of 2021. My tapestries will only be there until October.

The first of the two new tapestries are “from the PUP” which will be on exhibition as part of the BTG Threads in Sheds show at Whitchurch Silk Mill from 11th September- 21st November 2021 and then Farfield Mill in Sedburgh from 5th January – 27th March 2022.

The second of the new tapestries is another interactive audio work for the Solway Branch of the British Tapestry Group exhibition at Gracefield Arts Centre from 11th September – 30th November 2021.

Illusion on the loom — Illusion – audio interactive tapestry

Short videos and more information about both these tapestries can be found on my Sound and Weave page.

Supported by an Artists Bursary from a-n the Artists Information Company

Decisions, Decisions – Electric Brae

As we go into the New Year, 2021, I have been making decisions repeatedly about how I should proceed with the tapestry currently on my loom. The design development is based on a painting by Gordon Perfect's painting "Electric Brae", held in the Scottish Art Collection at Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfires and Galloway.

My tapestry will be part of an exhibition there by the Solway branch of the British Tapestry Group later in 2021. They invited me to take part as I come from that neck of the woods. The criteria for the work was to respond to a selected work in the art collection but not to make a copy of it.

I selected this painting because not only do I like its colours and the textures created by Perfect's handling of the brush, but also because I have a strong memory of experiencing the illusion of the phenomenon known as the Electric Brae near Ayr on Scotland's west coast. The challenge for me was to find a way of representing the original work as a tapestry whilst also referencing my own experience of the subject - hence the in depth decision making.

I am not showing my design at this stage (other than the detail above) but can say that the tapestry will have an interactive audio element to it and one of the materials I am using is conductive thread. I am being helped with this aspect of the work by the funding I received as an Artists Bursary from a-n the Artists Information Company. The rest of my time spent on the work is also funded by a Stabilisation Fund grant from the Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Good Causes.

On another note, I am pleased to say the the Fabric of the North exhibition (see previous blog post) was extended through to the end of March 2021. This is due to the fact that all galleries have been closed for most of the originally scheduled exhibition dates. Hopefully they will be able to open again before the end of March.

Supported by an Artists Bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company and a Stabilisation Fund grant from the Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Good Causes.

Fabric of the North

I just managed to fit in the installation of my two interactive tapestries to the Fabric of the North exhibition before the current Covid-19 lockdown started in Wales. The exhibition is at Kirkleatham Hall Museum in Redcar until 31st January, 2021 and outside of the lockdown in England which is starting today for a month, viewing the exhibition is by booking a time slot during their opening hours.

Until the lockdown is past you can watch the video above and also view the individual works on the Fabric of the North website.

Thanks to the Arts Council of Wales National Lottery stabilisation fund grant I received and an a-n Artists Information Company Artists Bursary award, I was able to update the touch sensitive weaving of Metamorphosis to proximity sensitivity and also update the technology used in my other tapestry in the exhibition, INTERCONNECTION.

Supported by an Artists Bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company and a Stabilisation Fund grant from the Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Good Causes.

Plan B – Always have a backup plan

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Fabric of the North and Making INTERCONNECTION

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Moving Forward and Online Workshops

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Great News!

Work can now go ahead on redeveloping existing, and creating new means of interaction in my sound and weave work.

I am very grateful to the Arts Council of Wales for a grant from their Stabilisation Fund. This will allow me keep going with developing new work in which the interactive element of sound becomes based on non or indirect contact.

An expected result of the coronavirus is that there will be a continuing nervousness around multiple people touching the same surface. While the nature of tapestry weaving and the materials I use is tactile, and I have enjoyed the fact that people, to date, have been able to touch my work in this field to activate different audio elements, I am also excited by the possibilities for engaging my audience through a range of interactive techniques that do not require direct physical contact.

I am not going to say at this stage what some of my ideas are regarding this - you will just have to watch this space, as they say. The first step, however, will be to utilise the a-n Artists Bursary Award I mentioned in my last post, and develop my coding skills with Python 3. A better understanding of how this can be used with a Raspberry Pi and Arduino to achieve the audio interaction I am aiming for, will be very helpful.

So thanks again to a-n The Artists Information Company, Arts Council Wales and the National Lottery for the support to do this work.

This is just the start of this project. I will be posting about my progress and crediting my funders regularly here on my blog as well as on the a-n blog page and on social media.

Supported by a bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company.

Twitter: @an_artnews Facebook Instagram: @anartistsinfo

This project was made possible through funding from the Arts Council of Wales’s National Lottery Fund.

Twitter: @Celf_Cymru @Arts_Wales_ Instagram: @celfcymruarts Facebook

Thanks to National Lottery players, up to £600 million has been made available to support communities throughout the UK during the Coronavirus crisis.