Michael
Brennand-Wood is a textile artist with a national and international
reputation for innovative and imaginative combinations of ideas
and media. Since Working on the Edge at the Turnpike Gallery in
1988, Michael has exhibited in major galleries and museums across
the world. Chasing Shadows presents an overview of Michael’s
career,
providing the opportunity for us all to take stock of the preoccupations
that have provided the fertile ground upon which Michael has drawn
to create his multi-referential structures.
Chasing
Shadows documents the development of several inter-related series
of works over a twenty year period of time. The title of the exhibition
suggests a search for the ephemeral, a desire - yet inability -
to order chaos. Michael's work is a sustained investigation into
images which visually connect. His is a search, assimilation and
reconfiguration of ideas influenced by travel, landscape/ history/
archaeology and music. Rebecca West once said that she wrote in
order to find out what she thought. For Michael, the act of making
in the studio is not an illustrative process but an important aid
to develop thinking and insight.
'Chasing
Shadows felt an appropriate title because of the constant sense
that I am in pursuit of something that is never still. Good research
leads to more questions than answers. Thinking through making is
the visual articulation of ideas.'
Michael
Brennand-Wood has been described as a map-maker. His work is to:
chart space; make routes; forge connections between space and linear
configurations; discover and make sense of the world.
For
all our knowledge of the physical world, many of us often feel lost,
not entirely sure where we are going. How do we negotiate a complex,
contradictory world? Brennand-Wood is a map-maker charting a space
in which we may ask questions about the material world. What do
we value!
How do we tell the story of what we wish to save!
Chasing Shadows traces the impulses which have driven his explorations.
He was born and raised in Bury, Lancashire, (once a centre for the
spinning and weaving of cotton) into a family who had worked in
the mills. He remembers visiting the mill as a child and being fascinated
by 'its amazing machinery with threads speeding backwards and forwards'.
Fabric was a familiar childhood toy.
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