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Assisted by the British Council and the Australia Council, this is Michael Brennand-Wood's first solo exhibition in Australia, although his artistic involvement has already been very significant. Residencies in 1984 and 1988 followed the controversial and stimulating exhibition Fabric and Form: New Textile Art from Britain, which was curated by Brennand-Wood and toured throughout Australia by the British Council in1982. This exhibition was the focus of much debate about the new freedom of expression in textile art.
He sees his own work as mixed-media based, "a recycling of both materials and influences from the world of art",1 acknowledging both his textile and painting backgrounds. Despite actively contributing to the dissolution of textile categories, textile references and quotations continue to inform his work.
The current exhibition is important since it traces the development and progression of Brennand-Wood's work over a number of years, covering work characteristic of his early wooden grid formulations (c.1982) and moving into the more recent dynamic, circular forms. The scope and richness of ideas make for a rewarding and exciting exhibition as each series of explorations moves into another. He has achieved a compelling synthesis of sculpture, collage, assemblage, painting, drawing, and embroidery.
The early wooden grid structures are indicative of Brennand-Wood's innovatory approach to technique and materials. As a painting student drawn to the potential of textiles, he applied a concern with structures to the idea of constructing a rigid canvas - the wooden grid - into which he could "stitch ", treating embroidery as a mark-making medium like drawing or painting.
Part of the fascination with Brennand-Wood's work is the density of visual detail and information carried in these earlier pieces. The saturated polyphony of