Pattern Translation: Al Munro

Artist Statement
Al Munro
The work in the exhibition continues my interest in translating and distorting
mathematical patterns to explore relationships between textile patterning and painted
abstraction, and begins a new focus on the aberrations and slippages that can occur
as a pattern, like a a spoken message, is translated from one ‘language’ to another.
This process is somewhat like the child’s game of Whisper down the lane or Chinese
Whispers in which a message is whispered from one person to the next; the joy of the
game comes from the unexpected changes to the message that have occurred in the
process of communication.
The exhibition consists of four pairs of dresses sewn from digitally printed fabrics
and paintings. The process by which these pairs of works were produced involved
translating textile patterns into painted forms, translating and manipulating these via
the conventions of repeat fabric design to create digitally printed textiles/paintings,
and then translating back back to traditional painted form. This created a series of
opportunities for the patterns to be distorted, either by the conventions of the media
(e.g the opportunity to undertake reflections and rotations to create a repeat pattern
for textile printing) or through the natural slippages and changes that ossified through
each iteration.
Al Munro is represented in Australia by May Space, Sydney
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