Hope Emerging is a solo exhibition by conceptual artist Tara Kennedy. Including textiles, drawings and installation, the show explores themes of suffering, transformation and hope.
HOPE EMERGING
‘The painful suffering from cultural conflict could transform and develop into hope through unity, understanding and empathy’.
Artist Tara Kennedy, 2024
Tara Kennedy's textile art involves the despair she feels around the suffering experienced by different cultures and religions through conflict. This drives her to communicate messages of acceptance, empathy and hope emerging. Kennedy feels that through understanding these messages there could be more harmonious consequences and peace. In her work, these messages are created by expressions of emerging hope, using colour, texture and form.
The materials Kennedy uses are chosen for their tactile quality, as she seeks to create a sense of comfort. They include soft yarns, threads and fabrics and sometimes contrasting materials.
Techniques of knitting, wrapping, felting and stitch are used with which she creates soft sculptures and wall hangings alongside detailed drawings. Process is also significant, referencing therapeutic and meditative practices.
Coloured yarns provide a metaphor expressing the transformation from blood spilt and pain of suffering through graduated tones to ivory conveying hope.
The artist uses imagery of knots and spikes to express tension, wrapped lengths and cages to suggest protection, bundles suggesting unity and cascading forms with buds to communicate hope.
Tara Kennedy is a contemporary textile artist who draws on her emotional responses to create sculptures, hangings and wall art. A range of techniques are used which include felting, knitting and stitching, as well as shibori - a tie-dye technique - with mixed yarns, fabrics and threads.