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Colours of Kutch with an Australian touch

Madhur Tankha

‘Dry summer’: Block print and ink on paper by Maggie Baxter

NEW DELHI: For the past 18 years, Australian artist Maggie Baxter has been working diligently with the indigenous crafts-persons of Gujarat. She will now showcase her works at a weeklong exhibition in Visual Arts Gallery of India Habitat Centre here beginning this Monday.

Titled “Unobstructed: Textiles and Works on Paper”, the exhibition will be inaugurated on Sunday by Australian Deputy High Commissioner David Holly.

Maggie was introduced to traditional weaving, block-printing and embroidery in Kutch by an Indian designer friend. “As Kutch specialises in traditional textile craft, I come to India two or three times every year. Since 1990 this place has been witnessing a number of changes. Fortunately now the designers working under me are more qualified to do the job. They have a better understanding of divergent design styles,” says she.

Stating that the textile works at the exhibition would be an amalgamation of the visual expansiveness of the Western Australian landscape and the apparent emptiness of Kutch , Maggie says: “There is no attempt to represent nature within the works, but rather the unrestricted horizon, the lack of perspective and emotions that those places draw out. The two places have much in common.”

According to Maggie each large textile work is a complex layering of traditional crafts such as tie-dye, appliqué, block-printing and embroidery.

“Drawing has always been a prelude and postscript to my textiles and demarcation between the two grows ever more blurred. One of my pieces, ‘Intersection (III)’, is a three-dimensional drawing in space made from textile. The foundation for some of the drawings is block printing which effects a metamorphosis that in turn will influence future applications on fabric.”

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