Penelope’s Labour: Weaving Words and Images

4 June – 18 September 2011
10.30 am – 6.30 pm, closed on Tuesdays
closed 9 – 23 August
Centro Espositivo “Le Sale del Convitto”, Giorgio Cini Foundation
Island of San Giorgio Maggiore
Free admission

From 4 June to 18 September 2011 the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore Exhibition Centre will host Penelope’s Labour: Weaving Words and Images,
an exhibition of antique and contemporary tapestries and carpets.
Curated by Adam Lowe and Jerry Brotton, the exhibition has been promoted
and organised by the Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice, and Factum Arte, Madrid. 
 The main idea of the exhibition is
to highlight Vittorio Cini’s great interest in the manual production of
tapestry and at the same time explore developments in contemporary art
and the renewed ability of artists to use the medium to tell very
varied, compelling stories that address the warp and weft of our
contemporary realities. Ranging from the late 15th-century tapestry
depicting the siege of Jerusalem to Azra Aksamija’s collective weaving
on ethnic cleansing in Bosnia Herzegovina, Grayson Perry’s vast allegory
of contemporary life in the Walthamstow Tapestry and Mark Quinn’s
"flowers" of our manipulated natural world, this exhibition puts the
woven image back at the heart of contemporary artistic practice.

In addition to some of the finest late 15th-century tapestries in the
Giorgio Cini Foundation collections, the exhibition will also include
contemporary tapestries and other fabrics by artists such as: Azra
Aksamija, Lara Baladi, Alighiero Boetti, Manuel Franquelo, Carlos
Garaicoa, Craigie Horsfield, Simon Peers & Nicholas Godley, Grayson
Perry and Marc Quinn.

  In homepage: Grayson Perry Walthamstow Tapestry, detail
2009, 290 x 1500 cm., wool and silk.
Woven by Flanders Tapestries from files prepared at Factum Arte.
Published by Charles Booth-Clibborn under his imprint The Paragon
Press in an edition of 3. Private collection.