With thread, Amanda deftly draws things around her in 1:1 scale: house plants, flowers, furniture, wallpaper, and tangles of rope and thread. As part of a practice of sketching and object-based enquiry, most of these retain a strong likeness to their sources, while others morph or accumulate into larger expressions and colour fields. In a series of lined paper drawings – delicate, full of empty space – each page unravels into loose mass of threads, becoming a three-dimensional form. Clusters of spirographic discs are transformed into a field of hanging blooms, whereas other textile “rounds” lose their floral association altogether, forming what the artist calls “neon clouds.” Working at this scale – and using the strategy of repetition to manifest larger forms – reveals the size and nature of the artist’s tools, which are also domestic in nature and scale. Often working with a standard sewing machine on water-soluble paper, she constructs and activates “the line,” while amassing thread into something much more substantial than we typically know it to be.
More often though, Micah sculpts by cutting. Working in miniature, and with found objects that he cuts into and cuts out of, he effectively alters coins, plates, bottles, and other ordinary “thrift store” or collectible finds. With precision and patience, he turns an image of the American Lincoln Memorial penny into a pair of tiny glasses, cutting out the voids between its iconic columns. Using the Italian San Marino coin as both a medium and inspiration, he creates a structure of joyful children. With a series of plates adorned with sentimental Norman Rockwell illustrations, Micah carefully removes the (cracking) pictorial layer to show what’s underneath: an American brick bond. With another plate, he cuts out an arched window. Glass beer and gin bottles, as well as a ceramic teapot, are also treated with the same brick pattern. A Zippo is transformed into a tiny chimney with its surface of bricks. Both the Rockwell images and bricks point to home – an adopted and perpetuated notion of the domestic that is familiar to those that live “on this side of the pond.” In this way, Micah participates in a kind of home-making that is different yet akin to Amanda’s remaking in thread the “things of everyday life.” - Text by Deborah Wang
The exhibition ran from May 10th - 30th
Click here to read the exhibition catalogue
