The Decorating Business

For over a decade, British artist David Mabb has consciously borrowed from the work of others. In this exhibition he explores ways to open up the art of William Morris (1834 – 1896) to new interpretations. Morris exerted an immense influence on the artistic and political developments of his time by leading a campaign to bring art to the people and to better social conditions. Mabb uses reproductions of Morris's textile and wallpaper designs as a starting point but offers a new twist. He overpaints the Morris design with squares of white, black and red and isolates selected aspects of the design—for example a single floral motif—resulting in works that are evocative of other eras such as Pop or Russian Constructivism. The overpainted squares introduce an angular modernist space into the design. It is as if Morris's Arts and Crafts movement has converged with the utopian project of Modernism. Not only is it the look or style of these movements that interests Mabb, but also the issues of ideology, aesthetics and politics, which they posed. His work represents a point of connection between differing styles and offers us new ways of looking at where we've been and where we're headed. Seen in the context of Gairloch, a home based on an architectural style from the Arts and Crafts period, Mabb's work has an extraordinary richness. In addition to his textile and wallpaper installations, Mabb has also produced a new single channel video, which reflects on the meeting of craft and technology in the work of Morris

About Two Worlds

David Mabb, 'About Two Worlds', 2015, acrylic paint, varnish, pencil, facsimiles of El Lissitzky’s 'About Two Squares' and William Morris’ Kelmscott Press 'The Wood Beyond the World' mounted on linen. Painting 1 (the Maid), 100 x 155 cm, Paintings 2-15, 80 x 70 cm. Photography: Peter White. Mabb presents a work in two parts. In the first part, pages from a facsimile edition of William Morris’ Kelmscott edition of his late romance 'The Wood Beyond the World' has been overlaid with enlarged recreations of pages from Russian artist El Lissitzky’s acclaimed book 'About Two Squares'. In contrast, in the second part, Mabb has also overlaid Edward Burne Jones’ illustration of the Maid from 'The Wood Beyond the World' onto a facsimile edition of 'About Two Squares'. Morris and Lissitzky both used their art to promote their socialist politics. Yet, whilst Morris saw beauty in the past, wanting to elevate Victorian society from the ugliness imposed by industrial manufacturing, for Lissitzky, the Russian revolution and the rapid advancement of science and technology meant the old world was no longer recognisable. He sought an entirely new visual language that could express the socialist world he believed he was helping to construct. Mabb draws our attention to the different directions of Morris and Lissitzky’s influences. Although on the surface they become collaborators, their designs remain distinct, never able to fully merge or separate

Art into Everday Life

In this chapter David Mabb’s exhibition Art into Everyday Life, held at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania in 2006 is discussed. For the exhibition, five paintings were produced, three of which were made into carpets. They depicted images of modernist Soviet era buildings in Vilnius, intertwined with William Morris designs

Announcer

David Mabb. 'Announcer', originally show at Focal Point Gallery, Southend on Sea, Essex, UK 14 April to 12 July 2014. Published in 'And Painting? A pintura contemporânea em questão'. Isabel Sabino (Ed.

Long Live the New! Morris & Co. Hand Printed Wallpapers and K. Malevich’s Suprematism, Thirty Four Drawings, including covers, addendum and afterword

The installation Long Live the New! Morris & Co. Hand Printed Wallpapers and K. Malevich’s Suprematism, Thirty Four Drawings, including covers, addendum and afterword is made from a combination of two books: a Morris & Co. wood block printed wallpaper pattern book from the 1970s containing 45 sample wallpaper designs by William Morris, the 19th Century English wallpaper, textile and book designer, poet, novelist and Communist; and the Russian artist and pioneer of abstraction Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism, Thirty Four Drawings, published in 1920. Pages from Malevich’s book, including its front cover and afterword, have been painted (or, for the afterword, pasted) sequentially over the pages and front cover of the Morris & Co. wallpaper book. This interleaves the two designs, which are formally ‘merged’ together, ceasing to be objects that can be held and becoming an installation of paintings. But another transformation also takes place. The ‘politics of form’, the aesthetic investigation of the ideological intersections and differences of the two books, re-visions the world out of its constituent historical elements. Morris’ once utopian wallpaper designs are recharged with political meaning by their dialectical juxtaposition with Malevich’s Suprematist drawings and vice versa. This suggests a way of reinterpreting the past, through a restaging and reconfiguring of key moments in the history of art and design, that investigates what a visual language of change might look like. Long Live the New! questions both the rose tinted medievalism of Morris and Malevich’s idealised Suprematism

May Morris: Art & Life

On entering May Morris: Art & Life in the William Morris Gallery, one is struck by two embroideries, Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter, dating from 1895 to 1900. They are almost identical, but for two different roundels in each panel that run along the tops and together represent the four seasons. Each panel has a pair of parakeets stitched in coloured silks and metal threads onto silk damask, whose size and beauty far surpass anything William Morris ever produced (he couldn’t draw birds anyhow, so it’s not really a fair comparison). This double whammy sets the pace for the rest of the downstairs exhibition space. This includes Lotus, a subtly designed panel or curtain credited for both design and embroidery to May Morris, whose stitches, on peach coloured silk, pick out the design through reflected light as much as through the contrast of colours. Similarly, Maids of Honour, which presents a central rose bush with two flowers surrounded by a ring of violets with a flying bird in each corner, is stitched onto a fine silk net, the embroidery seeming to float in space. Only on close viewing does the grid of the net which supports the embroidery become apparent