Sozai: Materials. Textile design and techniques by Mika Hirosawa and Tim Parry Williams

Opening Date: 2003-Jun-03
Closing Date: 2003-Jul-31
A joint exhibition project between Mica Hirosawa (Japanese) and Tim Parry-Williams (British), showing individual works resulting from a period of practice based research exploring the common theme of textile materials.

The research focussed on a series of natural and man-made yarn materials including: Silk, cotton, linen, paper, banana, ramie and jute; in each case demonstrating given characteristics of thickness, weight, degrees of flexibility, elasticity, surface quality and light resonances. These materials were both common and new to each maker's normal practice and exercised craft and design skills for their use in the production of works.

Through a series of hand-weave projects, works were created using a process of yarn-based cloth sampling, exploring the deeper values of the material properties and characteristics through woven structural intersection, proportional placement, and cloth finishing processes. Resultant visual and tactile qualities were then translated through a process of design to finished textile products and display samples.

An educational strand was developed. Tim Parry-Williams presented the paper: 'Basho-fu - Banana fibre textiles of Okinawa', and Mica Hirosawa: 'Shifu - Japanese paper textile culture'. The papers gave the cultural and historical contexts of two of the more unusual textile genres and materials represented in the finished work, as well as the practical natures of yarn production for textile making. An interactive workshop session also allowed the audience to engage directly in the process of yarn making and experience the individual qualities of the materials directly.

While the exhibition itself presented a series of textile pieces as outcomes resulting from an exploration of yarn materials, it also demonstrated the research interpretations of the two makers, with their own cultural backgrounds, educational experiences, and research methodologies, and as the results of a mutual approach to working through a process of cultural and knowledge exchange.