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4 November
I was very glad to be able to make it to-night to the private view of the new show at my friend David's gallery, the work of textile artist Nicola Malet. (On the invitation, David calls it multi-media textiles, which also seems OK as a description.)
One of Nicola's points of departure for creating this very varied display of her work - there is a long wall of the gallery where almost every piece is different in feel (not sure if one was invited to touch, so I didn't, but these works have a tactile as well as visual quality) and compositional make-up - is a tour that she made of South East Asia, and the interest that it gave her in the plants (leaves and flowers) that she had seen.
Another (because Nicola has gained a degree in this sort of art) was the colour and characteristics of all the fabric that she saw, presumably both on sale and in clothing being worn. When I asked her what her guiding light was in juxtaposing fabrics, as, for example, she has done in a long vertical canvas, she told me that it was a visual sense of what goes with what. (I say 'canvas', not because it is painted, but because, as artists like her do, there is a strong sense of a coherent unity that is much more than the sum of the individual elements.)
As I hope that I have already indicated, there is a wealth of techniques employed from subtle gold shadings that bring out the texture to a filigree-like overlay using machine embroidery that gives a multi-dimensional sense of depth and complexity. I could say more, but this needs to be looked at, not described!
What can be described, though, is Nicola's thoughtful inventiveness and belief in her own work when talking to her, which is there to see at The Tavern Gallery, Station Road, Meldreth, till, I believe, 18 November - if a visit is possible at the weekend, there is a good chance of talking to Nicola about her exhibition, too...
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