Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Sadler’s Wells East, a new dance centre for the UK in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, opens its doors next month after much anticipation. Architects O’Donnell and Tuomey have created a tactile brick building, fitted out with wood and glazed ceramics, and hung with a neon entrance sign. But step inside and arguably the most impressive details are the two magnificent tapestries hanging either side of the central atrium. Titled “The In Breath” and “The Out Breath”, they feature a vibrant woven pattern on a deep black background — hints of figures through an archway open out on one of them, while a rippling coloured sun is on the other. They fill the space with warmth and movement. “I felt these curtain walls deserved a tapestry,” says the Irish artist behind the pieces, Eva Rothschild. She was inspired by John Piper’s tapestries in Chichester Cathedral and Graham Sutherland’s spectacular tapestry dominating the north end of the new Coventry Cathedral. “Tapestries have warmed, softened and humanised our communal spaces throughout history,” she says. Many contemporary artists and makers are in agreement and are creating works that are reframing the medium. Rothschild created her pieces with the Tapestry Studio at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation. In 2016, she had been the first artist to benefit from their open call and had created “The Fallowfield” (2018), now in the collection of the Tate. Her own gallery, Modern Art, had funded a further project, “Rings of Saturn” (2019), and through this, she had both developed her own proprietary colours — the vibrant red, bright green, purplish blue and emphatic egg-yolk yellow seen in the Sadler’s Wells tapestries — and chosen for the warp and much of the background a profound black. She loves that wool is non-reflective: “It completely absorbs the gaze, so that it creates a world of its own.” These are the largest tapestries that West Dean College, one of only two professional tapestry studios in the UK and known for its collaborations with artists including Howard Hodgkin, Tracey Emin and Martin Creed, has ever made, says its studio leader Philip Sanderson. In the early years of the studio, from 1976 through the 1980s, their primary clients were large corporations seeking to soften their monolithic steel, concrete and glass headquarters. Le Corbusier, the founding Modernist architect, had long seen the potential for tapestries — “nomadic murals”, as he called them — to work amicably with modern architecture. But more recently, artists themselves have led the trend. Sanderson has seen an upsurge of interest in tapestry from both collectors and makers; and there are plenty of places to appreciate it in the coming months. White Cube gallery often showcases tapestry, and a number of pieces by the late artist Etel Adnan, who worked with the renowned Pinton tapestry mill in Aubusson, France, are on show in its New York space in the exhibition Etel Adnan: This Beautiful Light until March 1. A tapestry by another of the gallery’s represented artists, Michael Armitage’s “John Barry, O Kelly, Sonny and Richard Moore (‘Everyday Heroes’) 2022”, also woven at West Dean, was recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. Liverpool-born artist Chila Burman has designed a tapestry for her solo show at Manchester’s Imperial War Museum North, on display until August 31.Meanwhile, as part of her solo show at South London Gallery (until May 11), Christina Kimeze, winner of the 2022 Denis Mahon Award, will include a tapestry. This was woven by Dovecot Studios, in Edinburgh, which has been creating artist-led tapestries since 1912.Director Celia Joicey explains that after almost collapsing at the end of the 1990s, the studios were rescued by philanthropists Alastair and Elizabeth Salvesen, who were determined “to keep the weavers working”. In 2008, Dovecot opened new studios in an old Victorian bath house, and is now the biggest tapestry studio in the UK, operating high-warp looms in the Arts and Crafts tradition of William Morris rather than the Renaissance-style, low-warp looms of the famous older Gobelins and Aubusson centres in France. Commissions come from both private and public institutions (such as the RB Kitaj and Patrick Caulfield tapestries for the British Library, in 1996-97 and 2005 respectively, and the recent Royal Museums Greenwich collaboration with Alberta Whittle), as well as philanthropists and artists. Last year Dovecot collaborated with Rachel Maclean and Tania Kovats, among others, with Maclean’s piece created for the Paris Olympics. The studio has just warped the loom for a major commission with artist Hurvin Anderson for Lincoln College Oxford.Joicey traces the resurgence of interest in tapestry back to 2017 and the exhibition of the monumental piece “The Caged Bird’s Song” by Chris Ofili at London’s National Gallery. Created with the support of The Clothworkers’ Company, the idea that “a contemporary tapestry made by a contemporary studio in collaboration with a contemporary artist should be shown in this prestigious central London venue” was a game-changer. This new enthusiasm, among artists and audiences alike, is driving a vibrant renaissance.Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
