Abstract
The output is a wall mounted artwork consisting of two wooden panels, each measuring 100cm x 100cm x 6cm, covered in vertical woven strips. The strips are long and narrow, woven on two warps using wool, linen, cotton, mohair, acrylic, chenille, silk, and polyester thread. The research challenges conventional understandings of tapestry and its historical associations, and explores its significance as an action in the 21st century. Mowatt invests the act of weaving itself to test the limits of weaving and its relations to painting, drawing, performance and installation art. The output was a large-scale work that consists, unusually, of multiple, discontinuous, woven elements, constructed using an innovative self-taught technique that uses a continuous weft thread woven on the absolute minimum of warp threads (two). The methodology employed challenges customary associations of tapestry with luxury and expense, to instead present it as an ongoing process of material use and re-use. The work was accepted for several tapestry exhibitions, all juried and international: Artapestry 4 (2015), which showed at four international venues, the Royal Scottish Academy (2016), Cordis International Tapestry Prize (2016), Karpit 3 (2017), and A Considered Place (2019), at Drum Castle. The output won the Cordis International Tapestry Prize in 2016, which is the biggest international prize for this artform.
Published Version
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