Indigo: A Blue to Dye For (exhibition)

[punyfig]

This is the info from a leaflet I saw on a UK museum exhibition:

Link

Denim(ish) related, but mods please move if needed...

Indigo: A Blue to Dye For

29 September 2007 to 6 January 2008

Brighton Museum & Art Gallery and

Hove Museum & Art Gallery

Indigo: A Blue To Dye For, a survey of the world’s oldest and most distinctive dyestuff, is a major exhibition of art, craft, fashion, and design featuring historical and contemporary indigo-dyed artefacts from around the world.

Believed by many cultures to be charged with unique talismanic properties, indigo is the dyestuff behind one of the world’s ubiquitous fabrics – denim. This spectacular exhibition, shown across two major museums in Brighton & Hove, explores the dye’s use over time and space.

The universality of indigo is demonstrated through an outstanding range of textiles and clothing from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. The wide range of decorative techniques includes hand-drawn batiks, stencil designs, paste and wax resist cloths, blue printing, indigo discharge and tie dye, as well as shibori and sashiko.

Indigo: A Blue To Dye For spans indigo’s rich history from burial cloths in Roman Egypt to 16th-18th century domestic textiles and clothing dyed in India and imported to Europe by the East India Company. The historical journey of indigo is traced through the rediscovery of indigo discharge techniques by William Morris for his chintzes, and its part in the Arts and Crafts movement of the 1870s-1880s and the manufacture of synthetic indigo in the late 19th century. The exhibition features one of the earliest pairs of denim jeans.

In addition to historical textiles, Indigo: A Blue To Dye For features the work of many contemporary craftmakers from Britain, Japan, India, Bangladesh and West Africa, illustrating the survival – and adaptation to contemporary fashions – of indigo. Some of the works have been specially commissioned for the show.

The process of indigo dyeing is explored through a display that examines the alchemical process of working with indigo, and includes dye balls, dye samples, botanical drawings and videos of cloth being dyed in different parts of the world. Its mysterious transformations have long been steeped in myth and magic and the show features indigo-dyed cloth with ritualistic and talismanic meanings.

The indigo story has a contemporary resonance through its use in the manufacture of denim, used for the most commonly worn fashion items in the world today. The exhibition features highlights from the story of blue denim, including original garments, advertising materials and movie stills from the Levi Strauss archive. There are examples of denim as used in haute couture, demonstrating how denim is continually re-invented and re-interpreted by both high - and high-street - fashion.

Fine and applied artists have long used indigo. The ‘Blue Art’ section of the exhibition demonstrates its beauty as a medium and inspiration. Japanese artist Hiroyuki Shindo (whose work is held in the permanent collection of many international galleries including MOMA, New York and the Art Institute of Chicago) is exhibiting in the UK for the first time as part of Indigo: A Blue to Dye For. His work features giant indigo balls and wall hangings in a stunning installation. The exhibition also features his contemporary Shihoko Fukumoto and the Palestinian-born Nasser Soumi, who paints in indigo.

Indigo: A Blue to Dye For is an extensive exhibition and is housed in the exhibition galleries at both Brighton Museum and Hove Museum.

Major installations at Brighton Museum include

* the History of Indigo throughout the world;

* Alchemy and the transformation of indigo from plant to dyestuff;

* Decorative Techniques Worldwide and the wide-ranging uses of indigo by different cultures;

* Fashion from Levi's blue jeans to iconic statements by Jean Paul Gaultier; and

* Blue Art, with a spectacular textile installation by leading Japanese artist Hiroyuki Shindo.

Highlights of the show at Hove Museum include

* indigo in British craft from the 18th century to the present day;

* Myth, Medicine and Ritual, highlighting beliefs in the transformative properties of indigo; and

* Workwear, including a denim prison uniform and a Japanese firefighter's outfit.

Also at Hove Museum, a separate display of indigo-based work by Jenny Balfour-Paul and Lucy Goffin complements the main exhibition.

[Paul T]

This sounds great. Jenny Balfour-Paul has done amazing historical and anthropological research into indigo... I shall get my ass down there and report.

[ringring]

This sounds great. Jenny Balfour-Paul has done amazing historical and anthropological research into indigo... I shall get my ass down there and report.

They have a copy of your denim book in the Brighton exhibit

The Brighton exhibition is a lovely little show (in a charming museum). Of particular interest was the wooden model of a Bengali natural indigo processing plant and the calandered cottons of the Miao people of China (there's also a beautiful calandered burqa in the Hove show).

There are a few pairs of jeans on show. Nothing great (in fact, one pair in particular was hideous), apart from the LVC Nevada jeans repro.

However, most (all?) of the information than appears in JBP's seminal book and you may have seen the type of clothing before in costume galleries, like in the V&A in London.

The Hove exhibit is smaller, and as advertised there are some 'folky' type work by Jenny Balfour-Paul (who also appears to be an accomplished photographer) and Lucy Goffin.

If you go to only one, then the Brighton show is the better one.

[frideswide]

Yes, it wasn't a bad exhibition (I saw it when it was at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester earlier this year, so I can't comment specifically on the Brighton installation), although possibly more of interest to the craft-dyer than anyone else. As ringring mentioned, they did have a few pair of (mainly Gap...) jeans hanging about to illustrate the use of indigo in denim. There was a pair of unremarkable 1940s-era Cone Mills overalls, but that was about it -- I'm sure some SuFu members could have lent them a much better selection.

The exhibition coincided with the release of a new edition (which as far as I can make out is just a reprinting) of Balfour-Paul's 1998 book 'Indigo' . The book reads a bit like PhD thesis work, and in fact grew out of her actual thesis "Indigo in the Arab World" (Exeter University, Dept. of Arabic and Islamic Studies), a work which led the British Museum ethnology department to ask her to expand it into a book on the worldwide use of indigo. Interestingly, I noticed Kurabo mills (Osaka) was one of the sponsors of the book's reprinting.

I wouldn't say it's worth a special trip, but if you happen to be in Brighton anyway (and why not..?), go see it, as this is the last stop on its tour. Admission free.

[Double D]

Went there the other week funnily enough. Worth a look if you're about.