Photos by Jacob Koestler
Lilian Tyrrell, The Irony, 1998, wool and linen, 89 x 122 in. Image courtesy of Brinsley Tyrrell.
Image used shows emergency supplies arriving for Kurd refugees fleeing the onslaught of Saddam Hussein’s Republican guard in Iraq. The same machines that have made war so efficiently destructive can also be used to deliver aid to remote locations.
Lilian Tyrrell, Last Hope/War and Famine, 1991, wool, metallic thread, cotton, linen, and other fibers, 84 x 112 in. Courtesy of Brinsley Tyrrell.
Lilian Tyrrell, The Terrorist, 1987, wood and linen, 88 x 62 in. Image courtesy of Brinsley Tyrrell.
This image was based on a well publicized image of a terrorist at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, when Palestinian terrorists of Black September attacked the Israeli dormitory. Four athletes, including David Berger of Shaker Heights, and a policeman were killed.
The Nowness of Then: Lilian Tyrrell’s Disaster Blankets
Main Gallery
September 15 – October 26, 2017
Campus-wide opening reception with Objections and Connections, Fiber Artists Talk Back, the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve’s In the Details, and the Davis Studio Gallery’s open house
Friday, September 15, 5:30 – 8 p.m.
The Artists’ Talk, 6:15 p.m. in the Euclid Avenue Gallery
Brinsley Tyrrell’s Talk, 7 p.m. in the Main Gallery
Lilian Tyrrell’s (1944-2007) complete series of Disaster Blankets was last exhibited at SPACES gallery in 2006. Lilian was profoundly dismayed and shocked by the world news and drew directly from television images for her own imagery. The themes that she tackled so boldly and ruthlessly in these large tapestries – such as the KKK, the tragedy of 9/11, international terrorism, starvation in underdeveloped countries, degradation of the environment, American military aggression, and the rise of Islamist militancy – are still with us today. Rather than diminishing in importance, they have magnified. I felt it incumbent upon The Sculpture Center to show a selection of nine of these magnificent tapestries to a new generation and to remind all of us of their prescience and currency.
The anger of artists hasn’t been extinguished in the intervening 10 years since Lilian’s untimely death. The accompanying curated exhibition, Objections and Connections, Fiber Artists Talk Back, shows the work of five exceptional fiber and multimedia artists of our region who have taken up these issues and others.
