Reading from Both Sides

The artwork, Reading from Both Sides, is part of my PhD, Shimmering Spaces: Art informed by an Anglo -Indian Experience. The research draws on my dual ethnic British and Indian culture within the context of postcolonial theory, Modernism and Modernity and current global art practices.
The artwork consists of two works on paper, which sit side by side and are pinned directly to the wall. The process of making, Reading From Both Sides, was very labour intensive and involved hand stitching a repeated grid pattern in gold thread on a pearlescent acrylic painted ground on Arches 300gsm paper. The front of the image is a grid, a conventional trope used often in Western abstract art. It is ordered, logical and unwavering in its highly organized structure. The reverse side of the image reveals a complex and subtle dismantling of this structure. Rather than being oppositional, I invite the viewer to read both sides contrapuntally. Both structures, while binary, need not be seen as oppositional but rather the reverse of the picture acknowledges the slippages inherent in highly organized systems and perhaps positions a more humanist experience of making and living in the world. Drawing on contemporary post colonial discourse, particularly in the context of hybridity, (Bhabba, Spivak, hall, Gilroy) my objective for this artwork is for the image to operate metaphorically as a way of conceiving the world not as binary and oppositional but rather as shared spaces both historically and contemporaneously.

The exhibition was hosted in Dubai and then Melbourne.

http://www.langford120.com.au/crossing-the-line--dubai.html
http://www.langford120.com.au/crossing-the-line--melbourne.html