contemporary art gallery Arundel West Sussex UK
tel: +44 1903 885323
Open Tues-Sat 11-4. Sun 12-4
Caron Penney
playful 2024
Caron Penney focuses on direct language, rhetoric, political posturing and language systems. She questions how we perceive words and our associations with them. Playing with their context through the use of colour and balance, she likes to confuse. Using dark colours to indicate positive words and bright colours to indicate negative words, the interpretation becomes camouflaged. Penney likes to work with the natural grid of the woven structure, creating her own unique font. Give Take explores and provokes themes such as, compromise and negotiation, and seeking to question a seemingly polarised society.
She often plays with single abstract words suggesting multiple understandings and sometimes sits them in a form of deserted landscape adding to the comical presentation. Although funny on one level and word ‘no’ should be heard as a voice of protest or defiance and respected. The duality within Penney’s work is to be heard, questioned and considered, smiled at and enjoyed on all levels - and is a reflection on the balance of life.
Penney is fascinated and enthralled by the medium of woven tapestry. She has worked with this friend and mentored for over thirties years, it forms a protective barrier around her and inhabits her inner self. Tapestry is an ancient weaving technique formed millennia ago, which is created by manipulating warp and weft in sequence. To weave is to breathe, to be calm and to relinquish her anxiety, fear, fun, love, humour within the body of the fabric. For tapestry is rich in knowledge and power, as it has been throughout history.
Caron Penney is one of today’s leading contemporary artists working with tapestry weaving. She weaves with traditional materials synonymous with hand-woven tapestry and has exhibited widely, has work in numerous private and public collections.