J288 The Journal for WSD

Exhibition Reviews Compiled by Hilary Miller

Tartan V&A Dundee, 1 Riverside

Esplanade, Dundee DD1 4EZ 1 April 2023 - 14 January 2024

As a child of the 1970s, many of my early memories are tartan-coloured. These include the personal, such as my grandfather’s kilt and the family picnic blankets; and the cultural, from the Bay City Rollers to the Sex Pistols. All of these are represented in Tartan at V&A Dundee, so there were moments of happy recognition around every corner. However, the tagline to the exhibition was ‘a radical new look at one of the world’s best known textiles’ so I was also looking forward to new tartan experiences. The exhibition was organised around five themes, so that tartan was considered in relation to the grid, innovation, identity, power and the imagination. Of these, identity was probably the most familiar theme, although little space was given to the mythology of clan tartans and the focus was more on the experience of the diaspora. One of the most imaginative interpretations of tartan in the exhibition was a grid construction in metal made by artist Jill Kinnear, an emigrant from Scotland to Australia. She had the ensemble scanned at baggage control in Brisbane, and then used the X-rays as the basis for printed textiles. They read as echoes of tartan, recognisable but not quite distinct.

Photos: Michael McGurk

Model Eunice Olumide at the V&A Dundee Tartan exhibition with Vestarium Scoticum in the background

Other variations were featured in Tartan and Innovation, although here my nerdy side was more engaged by the systems for recording and cataloguing tartans. There is a tantalising glimpse into a Sindex * card box, where thousands of tartans are categorised by sett, and a whole wall is given over to Vestarium Scoticum: Maide Dealbh by Jim Pattison. Seventy-five painted sticks, each recording the sett of a particular tartan as if it were a yarn wrapping, are arranged in a striking grid. I found the introductory section on the grid itself to be the least compelling. This was an opportunity to anchor the structure of tartan in both the landscape – the use of local sources of colour is barely mentioned – and the craft. The ubiquity of grids in world textile traditions was noted as a fact, but the link to the basic technology of the loom was left to inference. In rushing us towards the innovations of nineteenth century industry and twentieth century design, the exhibition glided over some fundamentals. On the plus side, I loved the hands-on design tool of rectangles of coloured Perspex – a great way to play with colour blends, which lots of visitors were enjoying! If you are interested in the origins of tartan, particularly in respect of craft and the connection to the land through fibre and dye, then you wouldn't find those here. But if you wanted to know what happened next, this exhibition gave you plenty of avenues to explore. Cally Booker, Online Guild * Sindex – Sett Index

Installing the Intersectional Family by Olubiyi Thomas at V&A Dundee Tartan exhibition

Errata

Panesar was incorrectly named as Karenjit Panesar. Depending was also incorrectly referenced as Wire Mesh 2 in one of the photo captions. We apologise to all the artists for these errors.

In the exhibiton review of The Jacquard Project on p.36 of the Journal WSD 287 , Hannah Robson was incorrectly named as Hannah Pritchard, Anna Ray was incorrectly named as Anna Reed and Karanjit

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Journal for Weavers, Spinners and Dyers 288, Winter 2023