Alzueta Gallery is pleased to present Mark Corfield-Moore’s first solo exhibition in Spain, entitled “Other Follies and Picnics”. Corfield-Moore’s practice often draws upon on his Thai/British heritage and experience as part of the diaspora in the rural area of Dorset, England. 

The exhibition features a new body of works which utilize the ikat weaving technique that Corfield-Moore learnt in Northern Thailand. In place of traditional binding and dyeing, he paints directly onto the warp threads before winding them on the loom and then hand weaving. These woven paintings are then stretched and presented on canvases. Ikat is distinctive due to its glitchy or blurry aesthetic, and the artist likens this instability to the subject of memories and our constantly evolving relationship to the past.

“Other Follies and Picnics” draws upon childhood picnics that the artist and his family had at the historic estate of Stourhead in England through his own renditions of the actual follies featured in these gardens. Often mimicking classical temples, follies are fantastical architectural buildings designed for amusement and pleasure.

Through his depictions, Corfield-Moore undermines a more straight forward reading of these buildings by including the names of traditional Thai dishes, the ones that he and his family would have eaten during their visits. The strength of these works lies in their ambiguity and playful sense of humor, where both the societal and the personal, the historic and the mundane are simultaneously combined.   

The medium of textiles is one that is malleable and reworkable. Historically used for tents or rugs, its ability to claim space is what interests Corfield-Moore, and he draws parallels between this use of space and the act of setting up for a picnic. The thresholds between public and private, historical and personal, and Western and Thai are fertile spaces that the artist explores, while the act of weaving becomes a meditation on the idiosyncrasies of past events and experiences.