Welcome to Episode 17 of Pattern Portraits!

Lauren Godfrey chats with artist David Batchelor, about the legacy of the Bauhaus, gilding tortoises and pattern as a cardinal sin.

David Batchelor is an artist well known for his sculptural and light based work that explores his experience of colour within a modern urban environment, and historical conceptions of colour within Western culture. David has exhibited worldwide with recent solo exhibitions in Sao Paolo, London and Edinburgh. He has delivered large scale commissions for London St Pancras Station and Art on the Underground. His book Chromophobia was published in 2000 and is a staple of art school reading lists worldwide.

David’s work delights in colour and shape, playing with the edges, the reflections and the shadows, drawing attention to the underside, the reverse or the back of a sculptural form, testing and flexing the parameters of our relationship to colour and the myriad ways we experience it.

David and I met earlier this year when I was tasked with making a series of beaded works on his behalf for his solo exhibition at Cecilia Brunson Projects in London. Though I was already a fan of his work, upon visiting his studio I discovered a cocoon of colour and a party of patterned references beyond what I could have imagined. We bonded over a shared love of colour charts for zips and getting giddy about chains dripping with perspex swatches!

David has chosen a delicious selection of patterns with a global reach including a Mondrian painting (Composition with Grid IX) from 1919, an Anni Albers work on paper from 1967, a 1965 quilt by Sue Willie Seltzer of the Gee’s Bend quilt makers and a Zulu beadwork date unknown.

You can see all of David’s patterns and more on instagram @patternportraitspodcast

‘Purple Punctuation’ - The PATTERN PORTRAIT print artwork to accompany David’s interview and featuring the patterns we discuss is available to buy now at www.laurengodfrey.co.uk

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Welcome to Episode 16 of Pattern Portraits!

Lauren Godfrey chats with artist Zadie Xa, about alchemy and conjuring through pattern, oddness over evenness and Korean Folklore.

Zadie Xa is an artist working across painting, sculpture and performance with recent presentations at Thaddeus Ropac in Paris, Hauser and Wirth in LA and The Whitechapel Gallery in London. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Zadie explores notions of homeland and diaspora through the metaphor of water and interspecies communication. Zadie has an MA in painting from The Royal College of Art and a BFA from The Emily Carr Institute of Design in Vancouver.

Her work often takes the form of textile constructions resembling garments or kimonos, heavily worked with quilting, appliqué and complex structural elements featuring recurring motifs such as the conch shell, the Yin Yang symbol, knives and kimchi. Performances have featured huge Orca whales and costumes sewn from bleach dyed denim in aqueous patterns of undulating water.

I am totally entranced by Zadie’s work and the way that pattern weaves its way into every element whether it’s a vast patchwork shelter, housing delicately rendered paintings or a gown hanging from the ceiling, poised with a pair of platform shoes resembling cabbages.

Zadie has chosen a vibrant patchwork of patterns including a Korean Bojagi wrapping (date unknown), Sonia Delaunay’s ‘Simultaneous Dress’ from 1913, a pattern of her own - Kimchi Rites and Kitchen Rituals, 2022, a Christopher Kane flower stamped dress from Spring/Summer 2012 and a Mori Yuzan wave drawing circa 1903.

You can see all of Zadie’s patterns and more on instagram @patternportraitspodcast

‘Magic Motif’ - The PATTERN PORTRAIT print artwork to accompany Zadie’s interview and featuring the patterns we discuss is available to buy now at www.laurengodfrey.co.uk

Image of Zadie Xa by Benedict Johnson

References:

Gee’s Bend Quilt Makers

Legacy Russell

The New Bend Exhibition at Hauser and Wirth

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Welcome to Episode 15 of Pattern Portraits!

Lauren Godfrey chats with artist Navine G Dossos, about wearing painting, pattern as lexicon and the connections between geometry and philosophy.

This episode was recorded on the occasion of her solo exhibition ‘Riviera’ at Devonshire Collective’s VOLT gallery in Eastbourne.

Navine is an artist living between London and Aegina in Greece working predominantly in painting and increasingly in the public realm. She has a keen interest in pattern and through her work explores geometric abstraction, merging traditions coming from Islamic art with the algorithmic nature of the interconnected world we live in.

Navine studied History of Art at Cambridge University, Arabic at Kuwait University, Islamic Art at the Prince’s School of Traditional Art in London, and holds an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art & Design.

Her exhibition at Volt is a commission led by Towner Eastbourne in collaboration with Devonshire Collective and presents a new collaboratively designed patterned textile featuring a language of symbols developed from the surrounding area of Eastbourne and the people that live there. The textile is available for free for visitors to take a 2 metre length with which to make a garment or furnishing, thus disseminating the pattern across the town, country and potentially the globe. A truly public artwork it also manifests as a series of awnings on nearby shopfronts, peppering the town with pattern.

Navine has chosen a beautiful palette of patterns including a Raoul Dufy textile from 1920, an Islamic Geometric pattern, A Japanese wave pattern, the Photoshop transparency grid and two patterns by the Bloomsbury Group; ’Pamela’ by Vanessa Bell / Duncan Grant and ‘West Wind’ by Duncan Grant.

You can see all of Navine’s patterns and more on instagram @patternportraitspodcast

‘Monumental Intimacy’ - The PATTERN PORTRAIT print artwork to accompany Navine’s interview and featuring the patterns we discuss is available to buy now at www.laurengodfrey.co.uk

References:

Agnes Martin

Charleston House

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