Animated gif of the takedown of Polytopia from the upArt 2011 installation.

It took months to make, a week to assemble, 4 hours to hoist up, 2 hours to nail in place, and only 1 hour to take down. It was kind of sad!

This project has a lot of life of its own, in a way, and ripping out the staples felt like disecting some creature. I kept whispering to it that it shouldn’t worry, and that I hoped it didn’t hurt too much. A surprisingly strong and strange reaction to the task at hand, and no doubt the thick layer of fatigue that filtered my reality at that point in the exhibition had lots to do with it.

Marc Ngui takes down the Polytopia component of The Reef installation. There was a whole lot of ladder action with this project...

Polytopia is an ongoing textile art project and it formed the background component for the Reef installation that happened 27 – 30 October 2001 as part of the Gladstone Hotel’s upART art fair in Toronto, Canada.

The exhibit was wonderfully photographable, and as a result we have hundreds of images to edit of the installation and exhibition, and those are coming, too.

Polytopia is an ongoing project, a sewn textile exploration of form and composition inspired by geometry, evolution, and utopian states.

The fabrics are mostly deadstock, mill end rolls, and the excess of various industries manufacturing luggage, cars, airplanes, household goods and interiors. Most of the materials are various upholstery types, vinyl and nylon, and the silver and gold in the images here were actually destined to be wall coverings.

The animated GIF above was made using photos taken during the layout part of the making process. As I make pyramids from fabrics that come into the studio, I’ve been laying them out to test composition.

Read more on the Polytopia project page.

Polytopia will be on display as part of  The Reef project at upART Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, 27 to 30 October 2011, and it will also be part of the Let’s Glow exhibition at the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery 20 January to 4 March 2012.
More details on the Exhibitions page.

Each of these pyramids is about the size of half a football, 15cm x 15cm base and about 18 cm tall (6″ x 6″ at the base and about 7″ high).

The fabrics are mostly deadstock from a wholesale liquidation warehouse north of  Toronto called NDF Fabrics.  Most of the materials are various upholstery types, vinyl and nylon, and the silver and gold in the images here were actually destined to be wall coverings.  Other textiles are waterproof or outdoor grade, from the luggage, car, or airplane manufacturing industries, and various other sources. The off-gassing is substantial in some cases and, I imagine, corresponds directly to the vibrancy of the colours. Some of the fabrics are post-industry cutoffs, with just a yard or so left on the roll, or else dirty or faded with age at the edges. But the prices are fantastic and it keeps them out of the eventual landfill – because who else other than  a broke artist will buy a yard of scuffed up textile of unknown composition?

In any case, mostly I have to guess, with some help from NDF, as to the nature of the textiles and how they might handle being cut, sewn and ironed, since some were never even meant to be held together by thread. And then, even if a textile tests well back at the studio – doesn’t gum up the sewing machine needle, doesn’t melt under the iron at the lowest temperature level, and holds a crease – I usually can never find more of the same fabric.

It’s interesting to work with such constraints – I never know what colours will be available, so I have to adjust my idea of what I am doing as I go along. In this way the project evolves under forces other than just my own aesthetic preferences.

Polytopia is being prepared to be part of The Reef artpiece along with a dozen or so Geoms and other small sculptures. The Reef  will be displayed 27 to 30 October 2011 at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto for the annual upART Contemporary Art Fair.

This one is about the size of a football.

This Geom was made to be part of a larger installation of textile art and paper sculptures called The Reef, on display 27 to 30 October 2011 at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto for the annual upART Contemporary Art Fair.

RNA Connective was a Toronto based collective of artists, engineers, and architects who met regularly from 1999 to 2001 to discuss their observations about the rapid growth of technology and speculate on its implications for the future.

Some of these discussions and the above drawings were published in The Architecture of Intelligence, Birkhauser 2001.