Apart from three distinct needlepoint works, the majority of Rosika Desnoyers' exhibition at Art-Image (from 18 January to 10 March 2019) is comprised of black and white reproductions of pages from
Pictorial Embroidery in England, her critical history of needlepainting and Berlin work just published in February by Bloomsbury Visual Arts and available for consultation at the gallery. The exhibition can be understood more generally as a kind of expanded book launch. With discrete and concrete elements of the publication on display, Partridges offers an immersive experience of the text as well as a primer on the artist’s practice as it is linked to her research and scholarship.
Rosika Desnoyers, Partridges (detail), 2019. Installation view of the exhibition at Art-Image.
The exhibition as a whole addresses the very limits of the capacity for display methodologies to convey information, and this is done most compellingly where absences are made visible. For example, a black monochrome needlepoint reproduction of
Partridges can only be fully ascertained at oblique angles, where the figure can be seen in relief. As the booklet for the exhibition heeds the viewer: “Approach so that you can appreciate the work of the artist.” The complete text of my review of the exhibition was published
here on the February 27
Akimblog.
