In 2019, Drapes was presented in Memory of Colour, a solo exhibition at Craft Central’s newly renovated Forge Gallery in East London, curated by Helen Kemp and directed by Marguerite Metz.
By this stage, the installation had already undergone several architectural transformations. At Craft Central, however, I felt that the work once again found a setting that allowed it to breathe. Rather than negotiating with corporate foyers, Drapes entered a space whose scale, atmosphere and industrial history became active participants in the exhibition.
The Forge occupied a beautifully restored Victorian shipbuilding yard where original brickwork, cast-iron columns, gantries and steel beams had been carefully preserved within the new gallery. A contemporary timber amphitheatre introduced another architectural rhythm, giving the space the atmosphere of a theatre suspended within an industrial monument.
The installation extended to almost twenty metres in length, the suspended cloth unfolding through the gallery beneath the restored gantries. Flooded by natural light from the roof and coloured by the cool blue reflections of the surrounding steel, the work acquired an entirely different atmosphere from its previous presentations. The architecture did not simply contain the installation; it continually transformed the colour, weight and movement of the cloth throughout the day.
For the first time since the original Mirror Gallery installation, I felt that the architecture encouraged visitors to move with the work rather than merely observe it. Walking alongside the suspended textiles became almost choreographic. The long sequences of cloth suggested dancers crossing a stage, while the dramatic interplay of height, rhythm and light evoked memories of ancient theatre. Looking back, I think there were echoes of Greek tragedy within the installation—a contemporary, fluorescent Electra unfolding through architectural space.
Memory of Colour also brought together paintings and large-scale textile works made between 2014 and 2018. Rather than functioning as supporting works, the oil paintings and pastels revealed the gestural thinking from which the installation emerged. The exhibition invited visitors to move between intimate painterly investigations and their expansion into architectural space, making visible the relationship between drawing, painting, colour and installation that underpins my practice.
Looking back across the four principal presentations of Drapes, I no longer see them as successive versions of a single installation. Each became an encounter with a different ecology of architecture, light, scale, curatorial thinking and neighbouring works. Every building rewrote the installation in its own way. Some remained closer to my original intentions than others, yet each revealed possibilities that could not have been anticipated beforehand.
Today, the textiles are carefully rolled and stored in my studio, waiting for their next encounter. I no longer think of them as finished works awaiting reinstallation, but as materials carrying the memory of every architecture they have inhabited. Their history continues to unfold with each new place in which they are suspended.
Exhibition
Memory of Colour
Forge Gallery, Craft Central, London
2019
Curated by Helen Kemp.
Directed by Marguerite Metz.