Tanabana

Tailoring and needlework have a strong resonance in my history.

It was my grandfather’s work as a tailor for the British Army that first brought my family to the UK, and I was brought up to think of textiles as objects of artistry and skill. 

Steeped in a home where cloth formed the warp and weft of family and of life itself, textiles have always formed an important backdrop and subject in my work, and the Tanabana tapestry works are my greatest homage to it yet.

Collecting family rugs and books from our home library, I began by photographing all the important textiles I grew up with, cutting them into strips and re-weaving them into paper tapestries where several designs are brought together as materials to form completely new patterns. 

Using many different rugs in each Tanabana, I am paying tribute to craft and the fruit of lifetimes of practice, but also re-interpreting it and bringing my own skills as a maker into a dialogue with those of generations before me. 

The Tanabana series has since expanded to take in carpets and textiles both decorative and practical, and more recently to include elements from sacred architecture, such as arches and stained glass-windows. 

The Tanabanas have been exhibited widely, with commissions for the Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival, The Saudi Arabia Museum of Contemporary Art (SAMoCA) and private collections across the world.