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If someone mentions architecture and textiles perhaps, like me, the first thing you think of is Medieval tapestries, those richly worked wall hangings that extend ceiling to floor. Your second thought may glide to the chunky wool works that furbished the modernist decor of many hotel and office foyers in the crafty seventies. Although in both cases the objects take on an impressive scale, for the most part the relationship they maintain with architecture is one of mask. The fabric acts as a cloaking device either hiding the imperfections of the crumbling castle wall or proffering a veneer of the natural in an otherwise synthetic world.
Expanding the consideration of these two art forms, Pamela Gaunt's New Works fabricate a dialogue between fibre textile constructions and architectonics in which neither is masked. Rather, the gallery space becomes a three dimensional games board wherein Gaunt entertains the interplay between texture and form, motif and grid, ornamentation and space. In keeping with her oeuvre, questions concerning the interface between the conventions ascribed to craft objects and the preconceptions of the art world flourish. While upholding her commitment to the techniques and traditions of textile production, Gaunt explores the domain of the gallery with its authority to legitimate and privilege specific practices. As viewers, we enter into an environment where meanings, like the materials presented, are malleable. Those familiar with her practice will recognise her use of multiples, but here she broadens the leitmotif to call attention to the spatial relations of the gallery interior and its authority to countenance art.
Reminiscent of the gestalt found in Islamic decoration, in New Works the individual segment becomes integral to the fashioning of the whole