Erin Mison, Porcelain And Crumbs, 2023, Hand tufted wool and acrylic yarn on cotton monks cloth, 95 x 95 cm. Image by Silversalt Photography
ERIN MISON | SWIMMING IN STRANGE WATERS
JOIN US ON FRIDAY 25 AUGUST, 6 - 8PM, FOR THE OPENING OF SWIMMING IN STRANGE WATERS BY ERIN MISON
In Swimming In Strange Waters, Erin Mison challenges the warm tactility of hand-loomed rugs with her ambiguous and contentious scenarios. The softness of the rug contrasts with the fraught encounters pictured, where bodies embrace or are possibly in restraint. There is rarely a passive or seductive gaze out to the viewer, and colour selection (including hints of red stitched into pupils) suggests complex intentions. Both intimate and resilient, the hand-loomed rug is an object that can be folded and passed on generationally. It is a form that traditionally carried images of female seduction or historical scenes. Mison plays with this format to link pervasive mythologies and contemporary intimacies.
An academic psychologist as well as an artist, Erin Mison is intrigued by human behaviour: “It started with me wanting to take these themes, hold a mirror up to the viewer and say that whether they are Greek myths, Christian stories or whatever else, nothing has changed. There are reasons these stories continue to resonate. If they were so far out, we would have moved on to another story, another Grimm Brothers fairytale, but we don’t.”
Mison starts by drawing. “And once I feel connected to something, wedded to an idea and it won’t get out of my head, I will sketch it on the fabric.”
Tufting involves working in reverse on the surface, shining a light through the cloth as a guide while the image develops. Working from front to back initially created distortions in the figures and she has expanded on this as a sinuous stylistic element where bodies follow their own curves. The cast light is an essential tool for making a tufted rug but interestingly it also finds its way into Mison’s work as a visual metaphor. Light cast from a lamp acts as another form of gaze, whether through a keyhole or onto an otherwise shrouded scene. In the works that more directly engage with mythologies, the light appears through archways or suggests the glow of a candle. It is a light that exposes unresolved behaviours or even the shadow self, a concept the psychoanalyst Carl Jung developed and that Mison has a comprehensive understanding of.
There is a fascinating ambiguity in the work as these encounters between bodies remain unresolved. Mison acknowledges, “There are a lot of women in my work. They are never a victim, although potentially a victim of circumstance. That to me is a very powerful difference, in their nudity, their ownership of it.” The artist is deeply engaged on matters of human behaviour and the enduring nature of stories. As example, she notes the varied historical depictions of Danaë receiving Zeus, who appears uninvited as a shower of gold. In contrast to the receptive or even ecstatic interpretations of Rembrandt and Titian, the female Mannerist artist Artemisia Gentileschi paints Danaë grimacing, crossing her legs, her glance to the heavens suggesting resistance or at least uncertainty. This ambiguity is embedded in Erin Mison’s treatment of figures which is then further activated by how each viewer interprets the bodies, their expressions, the direction of their eyes.
Erin Mison’s first show at The Egg & Dart Gallery explores a shift from domestic interiors to her own adaptive takes on classical painting. The textural warmth of Mison’s hand-tufted rugs offer comfort while we consider the complex echoes of myth and story in contemporary life.
25/08/2023 - 9/09/2023
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