Identifying and accessing natural materials and recycling discarded ones is definitely a strong trend in contemporary fibre art, which in all its forms is pretty popular Uruguay generally, and Montevideo in particular, and this is the time of year for more exhibitions reviewing student’s work. I love going to fibreart or textile art exhibitions, and this one, currently showing in my own barrio/suburb of Montevideo, is a small but very enjoyable one.

This collective exhibition is by artists who have been learning how to combine stitchery with basketry and soft sculpture techniques while using natural plant fibres and salvaged remnants of older and antique textiles under the guidance of prominent Uruguayan fibreartist Silvia Umpierrez. The works on show feature various plant fibres gathered within Uruguayan environments, including leaves and dried flowers attached to some of the small works in frames or shown on embroidery hoops. I don’t know if those plant parts were applied while still green and pliable, or whether they underwent some preservation processes before being used, but whatever the answer, the result is these works are all various shades of brown, with some subtle touches of principally earthy colours added by using stitch and some layered fabrics. The course of study obviously included layering fabrics, rust dying, burning edges of materials, and a variety of stitches to add texture. I selected these following photos to show the scope of students’ explorations of the techniques they learned.

There were several delightful soft sculpture animal forms under the title “Exstinctios”, the task being to use plant fibres to create some of the world’s extinct animals. Whether my interpretation of some of them was correct or not, they are delightful, and I’m pretty sure in this photo I’m seeing a diprotodon and possibly a kind of dinosaur.

The current trend to recycle and mend began at least 25 years or more ago and one of my favourite artists anywhere is El Anatsui. There are many people today creating their art by recycling salvaged materials, and proudly enjoy all the virtue signalling associated with it. The question of whether salvaging a material and using it necessarily adds extra artistic value beyond it being a well made ‘craft project’ is one I’ve long pondered, and wrote of on this blog in 2010.  Such endeavours as these artist’s creative pieces, and my own creative works are frequently dismissively labelled as craft, that is, something less than ‘art’, a world wide difficulty which is slowly changing through the endeavours of prominent artists like El Anatsui. When I look at how I work, and the materials I like to work with, I sometimes feel a twinge of guilt that I’m not doing enough to ‘save the planet’. I mostly use new fabrics, and worse still, they are quite often man made fibres, plus I definitely favour polyester threads and synthetic batting/guata in my own fibreart. On the other hand, I routinely mend shoes, garments and other things where possible, I re-use packaging materials and conserve water and electricity, I can cope with this level of ‘guilt’ in my art making!

This exhibition is showing a Dodeca Gallery, San Nicolas 1306, on Mondays to Fridays from 4pm to 10pm. Artists will be in attendance on Wednesday 27th November at 6pm. If you arrive during those times, and the gallery is not open, wander in and around the film and television school – a kindly student looked up from checking her phone and found someone for us. It is a known issue that they find it difficult to have someone there all the time, but if it were my exhibition I’d make sure someone was present at the hours listed on the school’s website, 🙂