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CIRCA111 review
Roscommon: Sally Maidment at Roscommon Arts Centre
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| Above left and right: Sally Maidment: from the series a discreet code of sartorial disrepair, 2004, etching and silkscreen on paper; courtesy the artist |
The title of Sally Maidment’s exhibition at the Roscommon Arts Centre, Suits you Sir, hints at the content of her work: an examination of men’s clothing, ad of the traditional art of tailoring. During a residency in Cyprus, Maidment had been impressed by the number of tailors’ shops there, and by the male environment of tailors at work, measuring, cutting and stitching. These were a legacy of the British and Turkish influences on the island.
The exhibition included work in a variety of media: drawings, etchings, mixed media, installation, and a sound piece. Some of the works made use of the materials and media utilised by the tailor: blue dress-making carbon, pins, labels, a measuring tape, and a tailor’s wheel. There was a spare, understated quality to the pieces, combined with a love of materials. The art of tailoring was a series of etchings showing articles of men’s clothing in process, with coded letters such as used by tailors to indicate individual physiques. In some hand-made pieces, labels from mass-produced clothing were sewn into the paper. Rumplestiltskin was a small section of fabric from which lines of pins protruded, giving disturbing echoes of Man Ray’s surrealist object Gift. An intriguing sound piece included the noises of an old tailor cutting cloth in his show in Cork, and of heavy rolls of material being turned on a counter.
The catalogue of the exhibition resembles a swatch book; with serrated edges and pinstripe cover, held together by a ribbon and two buttons, and reading from back to front, it has a pleasing hand-made quality.
Maidment’s exhibition in Roscommon was highly impressive in its coherence of thought, its wit and its craftsmanship, and deserves to travel. Like a number of contemporary artists, she is interested in ideas of clothing and gender. But in her interest in male clothing and examination of male identity, in her observation of masculine intimacy and vulnerability, her work is highly original.
Julian Campbell teaches at the Crawford College of Art, Cork.
Sally Maidment: Suits you Sir, Roscommon Arts Centre, November - December 2004
Article reproduced from CIRCA 111, Spring 2005, p.83
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