Abstract

‘Collect @ V and A’, sponsored by British Crafts Council and Victoria and Albert Museum, comprises internationally recognised Applied Arts Galleries, Gallery Ra, Gallery Marzee, Amsterdam, Australian Crafts Council, etc., with selected works of their represented practitioners. Six textiles, each 3 metres in length, five completed December 2005, were selected and profiled by the Crafts Council/Scottish Gallery. These works extend research initiated by Starszakowna in the SRIF funded (£148,000) Research Futures Project she established at UoAL in 2001. This research addressed the ubiquity of the digitally derived textile through interventions of synchronous, embossed screen-printed image and other experimental processes to create a chimeric textile; a paradigmatic shift within the field. This research has subsequently been subject to invited presentations to industry and academia, including Mantero Lab (Milan/Como), Dutch Textile Museum (Tilburg), etc.
The resultant textiles form a palimpsest of filmic, translucent glazed digital image and opaque, three-dimensionally textured, embossed and oxidised surfaces that effectively challenge perceptions of virtual and actual reality. These qualities are optimised to reflect issues addressed within the works, namely the nature of cultural identity and the impact of socio-political change, dislocation and the urbanised environment. ‘Diasporas’, for example, specifically addresses enforced exile, the impacting loss of a mother tongue, and the nature of cultural estrangement, anomie and ‘otherness’. Purchased for the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum 2006, ‘Diasporas’ was featured in Surface Design Vol.30 Summer 2006, published Surface Design Association (USA), ISSN 0-74470-89282-3, and may be viewed in V&A Magazine, pub. V and A Museum, Issue 10 summer 2006, and on V and A website www.vam.ac.uk. Six later works completed in 2006/07 were also selected for exhibition at ‘Collect @ V&A’ 2007 (Collect catalogue, published Crafts Council ISBN-13 978-1-85759-511-6), two being purchased for permanent installation Bank of Scotland HQ.