| The Caged Bird’s Song is a triptych tapestry designed by Chris Ofili and created by Dovecot over a period of three years and was commissioned by The Clothworkers’ Company in 2014 to support the work of Britain’s oldest tapestry studio. The exhibition will bring to life the process by which Dovecot’s master weavers transformed the colours, myths and magic of Ofili’s watercolour design. For the first time, audiences in Scotland will have the opportunity to see the tapestry, which will form the centrepiece of an exhibition in the Studios where it was woven. Visitors will be able to immerse themselves in the medium, gaining a fascinating insight into the weavers’ work and seeing their original colour experiments, learning the process of creating a cartoon and discovering the skills required to interpret an artist’s design. Measuring over seven metres wide, The Caged Bird’s Song took five weavers three years to create, requiring 35 kilos of wool over a period of 6,000 hours. The weavers increased the original design, a watercolour by Chris Ofili, by over 800% to draw the cartoon that guided their work. Like many artists before him who have engaged with this medium, Chris Ofili worked closely with master weavers to see his design translated into a tapestry. Ofili himself has said “The Caged Bird’s Song is a marriage of watercolour and weaving. I set out to challenge the weaving process, by doing something free flowing in making a watercolour, encouraging the liquid pigment to form the image, a contrast to the weaving process. With their response, which is an interpretation rather than a reproduction, the weavers have paid a type of homage to the watercolour that I gave them.” The imagery in the tapestry reflects the artist’s long-held interest in classical mythology and contemporary ‘demigods’, together with the stories, magic and colour of the Trinidadian landscape. The exhibition has been made possible thanks to the loan of The Caged Bird’s Song from The Clothworkers’ Company, the Livery Company established in 1528 to oversee the cloth-finishing trade in the City of London and was the subject of both an exhibition at National Gallery London and a BBC documentary in 2017. Dovecot’s Master Weaver, Naomi Robertson said, “It is rare that an artist has previous experience of their work being woven in tapestry before collaborating with Dovecot. Chris came to the studios before designing his piece and spent time understanding our process and skills, what we do, how we achieve it and what works. The result reflects his knowledge and interest in the medium, and I very much hope we get to work together again.” |
The exhibition is part of the Edinburgh Art Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and runs from 28th June – 5th October 2024.
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 