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Friday, February 1, 2013

El Anatsui at the ROM


After the World of Threads exhibitions in Oakville, Articulation moved to Toronto to explore the city while waiting for more World of Threads exhibitions to open. We spent a morning at the Royal Ontario Museum.

The ROM highlight for me was to see a work by El Anatsui for the first time.
Called Straying Continents, it was commissioned for the ROM in 2010.


Using his signature material, liquor bottle caps, he has linked them to make a huge metal textile.

 What I hadn't noticed before, when looking at images of his work, is how he snips the metal caps into lengths to make a metal mesh-like textile which is much more open and flexible than the textile of round caps.


 The experience of viewing his work was better than I imagined.
The way he controls his medium to work at such a vast scale is inspiring.
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1 comment:

Judy Martin said...

I love El Anatsui.

I saw his solo show at the ROM in early 2012 -

What I took away was the draping of those large fabrics using nails in the wall. They really became sculptural.

There's an Art 21 video about him and the young men he employs to make the sections.

I also liked reading your posts about world of threads, Lesley.