Sagarika Sundaram

The exhibition Form / Symbol presents three artists whose practices enagage with precepts of colour theory, physical craft and ever-evolving symbology. Spread across different mediums and generations, the works of Delaunay, Eddy and Sundaram typify a love of making and interaction with material as both a celebration of surface aesthetics and a window into much deeper notions of – variously – narrative, philosophy & tradition.

The notion of a ‘hidden language’, of an implied meaning, is strong too in the fantasticly intricate textile works of Sagarika Sundaram. The phrase ‘multi-layered’ is employed far too often (and too lazily) with regard to art in all manner of forms – but in Sundaram’s extraordinary felted tapestries it applies in the most literal and powerful sense. Through her use of traditional techniques and materials, Sundaram’s narrative is one passing back through time, though concerned far more with the connection of the present than any sense of nostalgia. She writes in 2021:

I treat textiles like a body –rupturing the flat surface, revealing what lies beneath layers – the sexual, painful, ugly, beautiful – interrogating what it means to be both of and alien to this world. I use abstraction to reinterpret textile as mutant, botanical, and psychedelic forms. By estranging what is familiar, I create work that possesses its own unique life. My material, my way of making, traces a lineage of makers spanning 15,000 years. Through my work I’m looking for our shared fingerprint.

Through this highly involved and labour-intensive practise Sundaram forms the conditions for works of rare confidence and impact. Densely saturating her works with uncompromising colour and patternation – Sundaram draws on a wide variety of sources in both the easten and western canons of modern art and antiquity. It is however in the intuitive building of her own language that these works may best be read.