Photobook Sunday proof read

Scotland to aboriginal cave art. Labyrinths
are one step on from this. Visual patterns –
and those expressed in ritual, dance, or
liturgy - often represent or reflect the
patterns in nature and the rhythms of
natural life: seasons, tides, day and night,
life cycle, monthly cycle. Or they can
represent ideas, beliefs, things imagined.
And sometimes they are used to impose a
meaning, a pattern on chaotic-seeming
existence. Charlotte Higgins wonders,
‘Maybe labyrinths were placed in churches
to hint at the notion that the universe is
subject to design, however impenetrable its
patterns might appear.’[26]
Pattern is associated with women.
Spiritualist pattern, Kolam pattern, ancient
circular symbols all make this association
positive. But this becomes negatively
perceived when pattern is associated with
domesticity and the home. This may be
why it has also been considered trite and of
little value as art.
Ana Arujo[18] describes the link between
repeating patterns and the repetitive
rhythms of domestic work. This has not
been entirely negative: the pattern-making
machine of the loom was once the heart of
the home (and in some cultures still is;
there is a beautiful film[27] of Iranian
weavers ‘singing the pattern’ of the carpet
they are making). But the idea of the home
as an extension of the woman’s body and
her only permitted environment clearly
made it oppressive. The flower-patterned
furnishings that marked a non-working
woman’s status were nature tamed and
mass produced, forming a comfortably
decorated cage.
William Morris fabrics are sometimes seen
to typify cliched suburban domestic pattern.
But in reality, the Arts and Crafts
movement was radically socialist. They
protested against cheap mass production
and the exploitation of cheap labour and
promoted craftsmanship, including that of
women, valuing the natural world,
materials, and handmade work
characterised by imperfections, not
machine-perfect reproduction. Their ethical
framework is relevant today those
attempting to live more consciously, justly
and sustainably – upsetting the capitalist
system. Something which made the H&M x
Morris & Co collaboration in 2018
somewhat ironic even as it ‘shows the
relevance of Morris’ iconic patterns
today’[28].
Imperfection in pattern makes it
interesting. At the Queering Space[14]
exhibition of textile artist James Hunting’s
work, he said: ‘Woven cloth follows a rule
of warp and weft. Disrupt these and the eye
cannot smooth over difference. These
exclusions hold the glance. They disturb
the non-looking and non-seeing that
pervades, enforcing an engagement.’ The
techniques of ‘the Feminist Uncanny’ from
the 1970s made ‘homely’ things like
crochet slightly unsettling to reveal the
oppression of women and the assumptions
that restricted them to the home[29].
People who refuse to fit in a pattern or
system show up the existence of that system
- which can otherwise be unrecognised as a
system as it’s ‘just the way things are’ – and
point the way to a different reality, a
different belief system, just as an icon does.
As part of the London Design Festival in
2019 ‘Patternity’ had installed a black and
white labyrinth outside Westminster
Cathedral. This design studio aims ‘to use
pattern to better understand life. But in an
increasingly complex, materialistic and fastpaced
world, filled with large conglomerates
and flooded by vast amounts of waste, we
also wanted to break the pattern. We want
to use pattern as an antidote to
humankind’s mounting disconnection and
sense of isolation; to promote a ‘new way of
seeing’ …. To observe the overlooked and
consider coincidence is to find an enduring
sense of connection to our environment
and to each other – a connection that can
simply begin by opening our eyes.’[30] If an
icon is something made to connect us with
the divine, with the soul, with a wider
perspective, with a different way of living
then it’s interesting to see pattern being
explicitly used in this way.
Image captions
All photos Pippa King unless stated.
Left page: Coronavirus pattern; Fallen
Blossom pattern; Kolam drawing in India,
photo McKay Savage/Flickr; spiral pattern
from a Sharpie drawing from St Mary
Magdalene church; Making natural
mandalas at an art workshop; Flytipped
Shopping Trolley pattern; St Hildegard of
Bingen, Das Weltall (the Universe),
1151(public domain); pattern from a
drawing in the style of Emma Kunz.
Right page: prehistoric stone carvings in the
National Museum of Scotland; Pattern
from Labyrinth/ Map print; H&M x Morris
& Co x XR; James Hunting work at the
Queering Space exhibition; Patternity
labyrinth at Westminster Cathedral