# 27
JOSEPH CONSTABLE, LONDON featuring MARK CORFIELD-MOORE
June 22 - August 17, 2021

Mark Corfield-Moore
„They make her feel safer“, 2021
Dyed warp threads, hand woven cotton, 175 x 105 cm

Mark Corfield-Moore, born 1988 in Bangkok, lives and works in London. 
In his painting practice, the act of weaving on a loom becomes a meditation on the idiosyncrasies of past events and experiences. Memories, be they historical or personal, are re-performed through a hybrid process incorporating painting and ikat, in which the artist paints images with dye directly onto strands of loose cotton threads before they are woven permanent. This ikat technique was vicariously adopted by Corfield-Moore from his maternal grandmother, who had a similar practice many years ago in North East Thailand. Although the artist never met his relative, this biographical discovery enabled him to process and rediscover his heritage by incorporating weaving into his practice. The works presented in the exhibition draw upon a series of intimate thought patterns that trace Corfield-Moore's experience as part of the Thai-British diaspora. Phrases such 'auto gate' suggest certain architectural structures and psychological spaces, which are then combined with each woven image to engender ambiguous and transitory associations: an automatic gate that acts as a protective threshold. Rendered with what the artist describes as a 'fizzy heat', the instability of each image and their sense of in-betweenness speaks to the temporal triggers that the artist relates to his experience of moving to the UK from Bangkok when he was five years old. In each work, fabric becomes a mode of sensorial transportation, of wandering through times and places that are physically inaccessible, yet internally imagined.


Joseph Constable is a writer and curator, currently Associate Curator at the Serpentine Galleries in London.