And lo it came to pass that the amazing new restaurant from the men from Bistrotheque has just opened. First up is a mini chat-a-thon with artist Nick Relph, whose new show opened the other week at the Chisenhale. His gallery in London is Herald Street. Nick came back over to the city of his birth to install the show, a series of his recent weavings alongside some photographic images.
We spoke the weekend after his opening. I wanted to talk with him about the differences between working and living in the two cities, but first he told me about the pieces in the show. I brought it with me on the plane and stretched it over here to save the Chisenhale lots of shipping money. This time I I had the opportunity to pull things out and get the hang of the show just so. It felt really good to take things out.
That felt like a new experience to me. Most yarn shops and weaving places are geared towards knitters. Wool for me is most furiously unsexy. I think using things like plastic and synthetic stuff seems weird to me. I wanted to try and not have it be too pretty I wanted it to be brutal and ugly too.
Even the most bog-standard Gap shirt, I can really lose myself just staring at it up-close. I think part of the reason I got into weaving was to be able to make clothes that I could wear.
Yeah yeah yeah. I just do not possess that gene, I have to let someone else do that for me. Kind of. You want to understand the basics and do them fairly well before you get wacky. I think I made that one towards the end. The thing about Rei Kawakubo is she often uses very regular and formal cloth. And of course tradition, or what reads as tradition, can be just as fucked up and weird as something that visually appears to be crazy.
