REVIEW
2121: the textile vision of Reiko Sudo and Nuno
Dr Jessica Hemmings
“2121: the textile vision of Reiko Sudo and Nuno” celebrates the twenty-first anniversary of this groundbreaking Japanese textile company with its first retrospective. Twenty-one, rather than twenty or twenty-five, may be construed as a somewhat idiosyncratic anniversary to mount a retrospect around. The numbers suggest to perfect vision, possibly even the perfect vision of hindsight, or a coming-of-age. But these interpretations assume a Western, or the case of the latter, distinctly American, point-of-view. Some may recall that ten books were planned to celebrate nuno’s first decade. They currently number six. What can be gleaned from these details is vital to our understanding of nuno: this is not a company that conforms to the neat squares or packages we may want to fit it into. Reiko Sudo and her design team create some of the most innovative cloth being designed and produced today. This consuming challenge is raised and answered before all else.
Evident throughout nuno’s collections is a desire to explore the very limits of structure, material and process in textile design. The company has not satisfied its own high standards through indulging in retro-anything. Nor have designs lapsed into the realm of appropriation. In fact Sudo, at the helm since 1987, embodies of rare breed of contemporary designer who does not cite travel or foreign cultures as inspiration, comments that could easily fill the pages of every design magazine found on the newsstands. Instead, the bulk of nuno’s design work and production responds to a desire to combine technology with the resurrection and reuse of textile traditions existing within Japan.
There might be something to be learnt from this focus. Much of the rest of the world can be accused of attempting to preserve traditions beyond their boarders, often at the expense of traditions languishing right under their own noses. When exhibition curator and Project Director Lesley Millar asked Sudo in a recent interview where her inspiration comes from, Sudo cited “all the amazing weaving mills and processing/finishing houses we work with, they provide stimuli on an almost daily basis.” At nuno, answers are found close to home; even if the questions Sudo asks fabric to engage with are of a thoroughly international calibre.
That said, a further element central to nuno is what Sudo has coined “inappropriate technologies” for the textile. The interdisciplinary leaps Sudo has been able to orchestrate and capitalize upon within other industries, such as automotive paint application used to create the Stainless Steel series in the early 1990s, have broadened the very parameters of textile design. And elsewhere, in fabrics such as the maize fibre “Green Fabric” we see nuno’s ongoing search for the possible textile value of materials derived from other industries. Refreshingly, the company also takes responsibility for the waste management of its own designs. “Nuno Tsugihagi”, for instance, is sewn from the remnants and cut offs of other fabrics in the collection, providing an ever changing and dynamic response to the inevitable waste created through textile production. Fabrics such as these should offer emerging designers a sage lesson that attention to ecological issues need not result in aesthetic compromises.
At the University College for the Creative Arts’ James Hockey Gallery at the Farnham campus, where the exhibition originates, tall columns of fabric reaching from ceiling to floor were arranged at the to create what has been termed a “forest” of fabric. The columns, all designed to be the same height and diameter, did more justice to some fabrics than others. In her catalogue essay for the exhibition Lesley Millar explains that Sudo designs fabrics that “have no designated front or back.” Sadly the columns do not celebrate this intriguing feature. Instead it was the sheer fabrics (which make up a considerable bulk of nuno’s output) that were flattered by the column’s ability to display two layers that progressively move apart until they reach the radius of the column. One of the best examples of this is “Feather Flurries” – a real treat to view on such a grand scale.
An understandable desire to touch was answered with touch samples attached to the walls near the corresponding columns. The attention given to the surged edges of these samples speaks volumes about the standards nuno brings to and upholds within the industry. In fact, the attention given to such a simple detail as a sewn edge in fabrics that also manage to take such risks and question so much about the construction of fabric, epitomize what nuno represents for me. No challenge is too large, nor detail too small, to be overlooked.
The informative exhibition catalogue includes essays penned by Keiko Kawashima, Laurel Reuter and Dr Catherine Harper accompanied by the transcript of a recent interview with Reiko Sudo conducted by Lesley Millar. Playing in the foyer of the Farnham campus was the video “Nuno: the unreal skin,” an interesting addition to the exhibition in part because the camera moves over the fabric, rather than capturing the fabric in motion. Inside the gallery several monitors displayed the documentary “What is cloth to me?” conceived and produced by Lesley Millar and directed by Lutz Becker. Possibly the two videos could have been switched, with Becker’s documentary playing in the foyer and “the unreal skin” playing near the fabrics. Like the touch samples, “the unreal skin” presents a more animated version of the fabrics at hand, while Becker’s documentary speaks not of nuno specifically but the sheer breadth that textiles envelope as explained through interviews with a variety of individuals. Listening to some of these comments before entering the gallery may have helped to break down some of the preconceptions viewers bring to textile exhibitions by beginning to recognize just how multi-faceted fabric can be. Certainly this exhibition’s presentation of nuno cloth purely as cloth, rather than framed as art or cut and sewn into fashion or interior decoration requires us to confront the beauty that cloth – alone – can posses. Fibre, in a sense, is given the last word.
