Max Allen reviews Enrico Mascelloni: Beyond the West

We are pleased to publish the following review of Oltre l’Occidente – Rappresentazioni estreme nei tessuti orientali (2006), which has been the subject of earlier discussions on Rugs of War. Max Allen is the founding curator of the Textile Museum of Canada where, since 1975, he has curated more than 100 textile exhibitions. His review follows:

Exhibition catalogues are sometimes works of scholarship. This one isn’t. Instead it is a work of narrative imagination and polemics, and as such it is a far more striking object than most of the textiles within it. Aside from the fact that everything is from “The East” – as if that meant anything – there is no coherence to the collection, nor any discernible reason for assembling it.

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George O’Bannon

Josephine sends a reference to an 1997 New York exhibition review by George O’Bannon: The Weavings of War.

In this exhibition war rugs from Afghanistan/Pakistan were exhibited in the context of weavings reflecting the experience of war from Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Chile, Peru, Israel/Egypt, and the Caucasus.

Peter Hill review: “Front Line of Ideas”

Sydney Morning Herald visual arts critic Peter Hill reviewed the Adelaide Festival exhibition of The Rugs of War (March 13-14, 2004, Spectrum pp 8-9) in its relation to the contemporary works in the Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

While Peter’s conclusion “These rugs… could almost have been included within the Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art” is the first to speculate how these works might be seen in the same frame as the rest of contemporary art, this is one of the motivating interests of Tim and myself in continuing to explore these works. More of Peter’s comments over the fold.

War rugs expose extreme feelings

Ann McMahon reviewed the first showing of The Rugs of War at the School of Art Gallery in The Canberra Times on 23 June 2003.  She writes: