Embroidered Monochrome Propositions and Other New Work

Description:

Embroidered Monochrome Propositions and Other New Work was an exhibition of minimalist textile works incorporating Kathy Slade’s interests in design, decorative art, art history, literature, and popular culture.

This exhibition featured a number of monochrome paintings embroidered by machine that repeated a stitch to fill the entire canvas. These works draw upon histories of feminism, technology and labour histories, and minimalist/conceptual practices. With a sense of humour and irony, Slade pulls from these seemingly disparate sources to create a sense of the uncanny and to play with ideas of representation and social politics.

Slade continued these investigations in a sculptural vein with her recent giant monochromatic pom-poms. By applying a modernist scale and minimalism to the pom-pom—an object with a purely decorative function—Slade conflates the two practices in the same way that quilt works of the 1970s and ’80s brought textiles into a high art discourse.

An essay entitled “Yard Goods” was written by Lisa Roberstson for the exhibition catalogue. An exhibition opening took place Sep 6, 2002.