Layers of Meaning

Michael Brennan-Wood

Michael Brennand-Wood is a textile artist working in the U.K., whose work focuses on patterns and the exploration of "meta-patterns, patterns that connect, reveal much in anthropological terms, about our spiritual, cultural and sociological history." His works all incorporate fabric, in some manner, but never in the traditional way. For one exhibition, Brennand-Wood's made 'lace' out of wood and fabric, blowing up the details to a giant scale and bringing a new meaning to the delicate, intricate work: "The pattern is inspired by pieces of Italian sixteenth-century lace, but Brennand-Wood diverts this from its original and expected use. Traditionally women made lace on a small and delicate scale. "It is an obvious symbol of femininity...As a man who works in textiles what I was really trying to do was to reclaim lace fabric for men...change people's appreciation of something they normally see as very small fragments." In order to change the connotation of the lace pattern, Brennand-Wood blows it up. It is a big work, 3.5m wide by 1.2m high. An interior and essentially domesticated construct thus becomes an architectural piece whose shape is reminiscent of stained glass."

Brennand-Wood's connection to fabric is the stuff of childhood: "'When I went to Art school, I thought 'I'm going to be a painter or a sculptor' and I got interested in using cloth as well, but in an expressive way,' explains Brennand-Wood.1 He finally hit what was, for him, the right track: "I didn't want to make dresses or to make furnishings...I would hopefully make art out of cloth. "It was an old family story. 'My grand-mother on my mother's side was a weaver in a cotton mill...North of England used to be a big weaving-cotton area...when I was a little boy I used to play a lot with fabric.'"

Drumcroon Gallery offers this description of Brennand-Wood's art and of the artistic process, in particular: "He was born and raised in Bury, Lancashire, (once a centre for the spinning and weaving of cotton) into a family who had worked in the mills. He remembers visiting the mill as a child and being fascinated by 'its amazing machinery with threads speeding backwards and forwards'. Fabric was a familiar childhood toy. His grandmother taught him to knit and sew, and he played with sheets of calico, cotton and bed linens which he inherited when she died. 'Field of Centres' uses fabric from this source. He also watched his grandfather at work with wood in the shed, and so the two materials with which Michael has formed his own visual language - textiles and wood - have grown out of a deep-rooted personal significance.

Paul Klee compared the artist to a tree, the roots are symbolic of what the artist gathers in, the trunk is the artist through which ideas eventually blossom. I feel that at the core of who I am today are the interests and influences of who I was as a child. Successive ideas drawn from experience build up in layers around the core, layers of references,each one accessible if you cut through to the next.'"

Some of Brennard-Wood's recent works are investigations into the floral patterns of textiles, but as a twist, Brennand-Wood creates patterns using live flowers and beads arranged on a fabric background. The final art piece is the photograph is the event. He has also created this same fascination with floral pattern using elaborate overlays of fabrics flowers, embroidery and stitch.