For this project, artist Linder collaborated with Dovecot team Jonathan Cleaver, Dennis Reinmüller and Kristi Vana to created a rug to be exhibited at the Hayward Touring British Art Show 8 , which opened in Leeds Art Gallery on 9 October 2015 and touring to Edinburgh, Norwich and Southampton.
Linder has applied the principles of collage to the design of a rug for the BAS8 titled Diagrams of Love: Marriage of Eyes. The technique of collage is included in Ithell Colquhoun’s Children of the Mantic Stain essay as one of the many techniques that can create ‘mind pictures’. The diagrammatic template for the rug is in the shape of a spiral and it incorporates the patterns of two 1970s carpets found in the late Rebecca Levy’s apartment above Raven Row gallery. Diagrams of Love: Marriage of Eyes was exhibited in different conflations within the gallery spaces of the four host cities of the BAS8. The carpet also migrated from the gallery for one evening in each of the four host venues to become a choreographed element in the Children of the Mantic Stain ballet. Linder has worked in collaboration with dancers from Northern Ballet and the award winning choreographer Kenneth Tindall to explore how dance may be created from a series of chance happenings. The fashion designer Christopher Shannon has designed his first costumes for ballet, translating the esoteric mid century writings of Ithell Colquhoun into clothes that could have been worn in Birkenhead clubs in 1992. In Los Angeles, the film and narrative composer Maxwell Sterling has created a score that applies the principles of the mantic stain technique to compose a series of musical motifs that each influence the other horizontally as well as vertically.
Linder was approached by Dovecot in 2013 via an introduction from Andree Cooke, to collaborate in the creation of a rug which involved an explorative journey between the artist, Reinmüller, Cleaver and then Vana, beginning in early 2014. This collaborative project with Linder was made possible by initial investment from The Dovecot Foundation and Creative Scotland and is in partnership with Hayward Touring British Art Show 8.
