CAROLINE ACHAINTRE

Right so I’m a bit of a London snob and it occurred to me that I never really went to see art galleries in other bits of the UK. So on a faithful day in September I had a little bit of a Eureka moment- Newcastle! It’s about 15 minutes away from my uni and there were apparently some good exhibitions running in galleries there at the moment. I honestly don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before.

I decided to visit the BALTIC centre for contemporary art. Originally I came to see an exhibition called “the playground project” which seemed to be quite popular. But on the visit I was pleasantly surprised by an exhibition which held these incredible textile pieces as well as other works of art by Caroline Achaintre.

The pieces were massive “woolen paintings” which appeared to depict faces, animals etc. She makes them using a tufting gun to shoot wooly threads through a canvas stretcher

They were created with vibrant colours and something about the simple geometry and the slight untidiness of the the woolen paintings exuded something pleasantly…. Crude/tribal.

I did some background research on her and it appears that her works are largely influenced by primitivism and German expressionism. A lot of her works are influenced by German carnival traditions as well as tribal masks and the personalities that these works exude largely depend on what materials are used to create them.

Each work has a distinct personality, often identified by the length, colour and texture of the thread used in the wool hangings. The characters of each piece are usually alluded to in the title.  All in all, the one thing these wool hangings may have in common is that they will definitely grab your attention!

Insider

Ray Inn

Martia

Beasts Beast

Wanderer

Moustache Eagle

Lord Lard

-Eme