The ROLU residency at this year’s Open Field involves in a number of collaborations, many which feature artist/designer editions: publications, wearables, objects, and furniture.
Artist/designer Peter Nencini, formerly profiled and interviewed here, has been engaged in a year-long collaboration with ROLU, the first result being a series of embroidered totes for Dream Shop on Rhiannon Silver’s Intelligent Clashing. In Rhiannon’s words, the shop is a “snap-shot of a current community of artists/makers/designers who operate and communicate online.” The Nencini collaboration will culminate in a collection of interactive stitched fabric chair covers. ROLU’s Matt Olson explains, “we’ve both been interested in Franz Erhard Walther’s use of fabric as a catalyst for an action…Peter has also been working on a series of films about the misuse of our chairs.”
Nencini writes, “I’m using readymade bags in 12oz cotton canvas available colours. Down the line, the intention is to design and make the structure from scratch but I do also like exponentially adding worth through handwerk, to such a staple. A significant step is to have pre-punctured stitch holes so that I—as a stitch novice—could do it. It also bonds the project with the boxes and other pieces which owe a good deal to Friedrich Froebel’s ‘Gifts and Occupations‘ lineage through to the Bauhaus’ preliminary exercises…
Above:
1) Froebel’s Gifts of Kindergarten No. 7 (paper parquetry) 2) Franz Erhard Walther
…This bag developed as a kind of sampler, especially within these bars. I feel encouraged by the reductive but glitched turnabout symmetry and gaudy, bubbly spurts. It’s a little marker for Matt and ROLU, too, on technique to be carried through to the chair covers.”
Above: Nencini’s stitch schematics. Stunning.
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