Handwoven Framed Art Work 7,4

Margo Selby: Vexillum III 2020 255x 180cm Cotton, Tencel, Silk, Wool Price on application / Exhibiting and Commission enquires: info@margoselby.com Margo Selby was one of 12 artists selected by Crafts Council England for COLLECT OPEN 2020, an exhibition of craft-led installations during the International Art Fair for Modern Craft and Design, at Somerset House in London. She was presented with the Collect Open Award for her Vexillum installation. Installed as a triptych for Collect, VEXILLUM becomes an imposing secular altarpiece – a sensory chapel or even a cathedral for loud cantation rather than silent prayer. The air between each panel is activated, they zing; the tessellation of the designs building to crescendos. They are visual works, employing optical effect like that of Bridget Riley in their off-kilter symmetry, but in their presence a synesthetic effect is palpable – they sing. More raucous than religious – they are flags for a banqueting hall – banners for carnival. They compel the viewer to participate – to dance in syncopated jerky jazz gestures like Milča Mayerová. They are celebratory, but with an element of aggression – a ‘vexillum’ being a portent of battle, as well as a Latin sail, and the delicate fronds of a feathery plume. To go beyond the scale of the loom, as Selby has done with VEXILLUM, is a technical feat – the designs are conceived in their entirety and subsequently executed to an exact plan – the works are made in sections, as dictated by the loom, requiring absolute accuracy to achieve a perfect match and a cohesive whole. Each of the sections comprises 9,000 strands, so 18,000 per square panel and 27,000 for the largest central panel – each one of those hand-threaded, each counted and re-counted and accounted for. Geometric pattern is made macro in these fractal compositions, expanding infinitely – the forms optically project and recede, creating a sensation of movement, and almost becoming images – alluding as they do to stairways and steps or pyramid forms – a chromatic hall of mirrors.