joseph scissorhands: Jessica Rankin 'the nostalgia for the infinite'

Strange Currents EA, 2020

"I was able to make the conversation between embroidery and painting more explicit. By mimicking and echoing each other the paint and the thread can explore the hierarchy of gesture and materials. They both play with the ideas of quickness and slowness." - Jessica Rankin.

To White Cube, Bermondsey, to catch this exciting exhibition of embroidery-embellished paintings by Jessica Rankin. Thread and textiles appear to have become increasingly acceptable and appreciated as bona-fide works of art in galleries lately. Recent examples were encountered here, and here. These paintings by Rankin beautifully merge the practices of fine art painting and embroidery. I enjoy the duality of the energetic, seemingly spontaneous application of paint, against the slower, more measured process of the embroidery techniques. It makes for some particularly dynamic artworks where paint explodes onto the canvas and delicately stitched threads mimic and enhance the paint spatters. The discovery of "hidden" embroidered text displaying the artworks titles along the edges of these canvases whilst following the leads of the threads off the canvas was an added delightful bonus. Rankin explains - "I love playing with the places where the paint and the thread meet, specifically where the paint meets the edge of the stretched surface... the very body of the stretcher feels like a sculpture to me and so the sides of that paintings became as much a part of the painting as the surface. I found that the language could sit there far more comfortably – like the spine of a book."