Exhibition, Intervention and Alternative Guide to the Collection by Studio Carrom, 2021
Distant Fellowship at William Morris Gallery
Studio Carrom’s exhibition, Distant Fellowship explores the connections between Morris’s work and legacy, and South Asia. Priya Sundram and Nia Thandapani, former artists in residence at the Gallery present an exhibition and alternative guide to the gallery with their findings.
An intervention throughout the gallery places the work of 8 artists, designers and architects with links to South Asia, within the collection, to explore how their practices connect with and can have a conversation with Morris’s work. In contrast to how South Asian art and design is often presented in British museums as predominantly historic, this intervention brings contemporary work into the gallery space.
Featuring work by: Vasundhara Sellamuthu, Shahed Saleem, Shehzil Malik, Kangan Arora, Rathna Ramanathan, Sofia Niazi, Aleesha Nandhra, and Tiipoi
Distant Fellowship, William Morris Gallery
25th May - 18th September 2021
Deconstructed Geometry, 2020
KYOTO Design Lab Series II: Exploring Tango Chirimen – Surface, Japan House London talk
In collaboration with KYOTO Design Lab (D-lab), Japan House London delves into the contemporary take on chirimen, a type of silk crêpe made of flat-woven silk originating in the northernmost region of Kyoto Prefecture known as Tango through a series of talks this May.
The second event focussing on ‘Surface’ hosts textile designers Okamoto Shioka in Japan and Kangan Arora in London to present their innovative projects investigating the possibilities offered by chirimen as a printing surface. Okamoto’s work Sensory Pleasure proposes an alternative way of processing the plain fabric into a three-dimensional surface, while Arora’s Deconstructed Geometry is a response to the Chirimen archive at the Textile Research Centre in Kyōtango and Japanese colour as illustrated in the Dictionary of Colour Combinations by artist and costume designer Wada Sanzō, who helped establish the Japan Standard Colour Association in the early 1920s.
Wednesday 26 May 2021, 12:00-13:00 BST / 20:00-21:00 JPN
Book here.
TEN - Textiles and Beyond
TEN is a celebration of the BA Textile Design course at Central Saint Martins and the creative journeys of 13 alumni who graduated from the course 10 years ago. TEN explores a decade of creative ventures of 13 alumni of the BA Textile Design class of 2009 who are working across multiple disciplines and professions; within textiles and far beyond. From textile design for interiors and fashion to art direction and set design for luxury brands, sculptural woven installations to creative fashion marketing, the work of the class varies across various disciplines of art and design.
Kangan Arora, Soukaina Aziz El Idrissi, Sarah Vajira Lindstrom, Celia Lusted, Anna Mojab, Kate Owen, Nadia-Anne Ricketts,
Chloe Rood, Jonna Saarinen, Gemma Waggett, Since Wang, Julia van Zanten, Sian Zeng.
Supported by the BA Textile Design Course, G.F Smith and House of Cans.
Curation: Kangan Arora and Jonna Saarinen
Exhibition Design: Chloe Rood, Celia Lusted, Anna Mojab
Graphic Design: Deenal Vallabh
Website: Oliver Penman and Gemma Waggett
15 January - 27 February 2020
Window Galleries, Central Saint Martins
King’s Cross N1C 4AA
Photo by Lígia Lopes
Kyoto Design Lab Textiles Summer School
The KYOTO Design Lab Textiles Summer School is an ongoing collaboration with designers, textile engineers and materials scientists from Japan and overseas. It combines in-depth study, field research and workshops with traditional and experimental textile producers in the Tango Peninsula and a five-day hands-on prototyping-based design workshop using the advanced workshop facilities of KYOTO D-Lab led by Mika Satomi (Kobakant), Kangan Arora (Central Saint Martins, UAL) and Professor Julia Cassim (D-lab). The aim is to foster long-term creative and technical collaboration between all parties and simultaneously gain new insights into how traditional skills and new technologies can be merged.
Kangan led print workshops at the Textiles Summer School in 2018 and 2019.
To celebrate 300 years of the chirimen fabric, KIT held an exhibition at their Tokyo gallery called Alternative Futures: contemporary design responses to the 300 year Tango chirimen tradition in 2020. See more here.