Michael Brennand-Wood-You are here

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Review

The name Michael Brennand-Wood has popped up again and again during the past 20 years at major international textile exhibitions, e.g. at the Lodz Triennial, during "Flexible", at the Kyoto exhibitions, and also during the 5th Betonac Prize in St. Truiden in the autumn of 2000. His works explore the borders of textile art. They might also be categorised as paintings or sometimes as sculptures. But almost always there is a background of embroidery or lace.
In his 1995 work "Seeds of Memory", Brennand-Wood is clearly inspired by the lace making technique. He exaggerates, alienates and enlarges this in materials such as wood, old fabrics and paint, thereby capturing the true spirit of lace: the fragility, the originality and the three-dimensional structure.
In the 1997 piece "You are here" he paints his life’s journey in the style of Aboriginal dream landscapes. In this sense he describes his life as consisting of many sensitive strands, open circles, labyrinths, closed square forms, amidst much infinity and chaos, all of which coalesces into a large pattern when seen from a distance. This very textile-like dream landscape expresses something of the quality of the artist’s personality: he openly tries to analyse himself, the phenomenon of design, signs and the uniqueness of the material.
This exhibition catalogue was published in 1999, the year of his major one-man show at the Piece Hall Art Gallery and at the Bankfield Museum in Halifax (see TF 3/99, p. 14). The most important of his works are illustrated in excellent colour print, and there is an article by Pamela Johnson, whose comments on the artist include:
"His work questions the institutional limits of disciplines too narrowly defined, and challenges conservative tendencies within both painting and textiles. His practice shows that textiles are no longer something simply grounded in technique, engagement with a process is a way of thinking. – His reclaiming of pattern offers a visual language through which to explore order and chaos. As he maps the use of pattern, Brennand-Wood poses questions about our location in a shifting world. He also draws attention to underlying patterns within the universe."
The book ends with the artist’s curriculum vitae, a bibliography, an index of all his works and a list of collections containing his work.

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