KT Doyle Acid Weave installation at Craft Victoria

I met KT recently, and therefore didn’t have any prior knowledge of her work. I believe that when she invited me to speak, I suspect I only hear the word Rug, rather than Digital Rug. This put me somewhat at a disadvantage, as I am more familiar with textiles than technology through my work at RMIT.

I could say I had a sense of feeling somewhat displaced from the familiar. Being cast into an environment whose language is foreign—that scary digital world. It generated a feeling of anxiety, of questioning: How will I make sense of this work? Where do I belong in relation to KT’s work?

I was interested, therefore, to find that these feelings were central to issues that informed KTs work: the works are expressions of the artist’s preoccupation with bringing consciousness to how she, or we, establish a sense of belonging in ourselves, in our home, in this world without boundaries.

The works were generated in response to the artist finding herself moving back and forth between her historical home, and foreign lands. Without the security of a common language or cultural signposts, KT began to explore how this intangible sense of belonging, manifests. We have all felt that sometimes-painful knowledge that we don’t belong, or that we do belong. And when we feel we do belong, at times, we could weep.

Is this sense of having a physical place to call ‘home’ a Western preoccupation, in contrast to the ancient nomadic tribes, who created a place for themselves wherever they went—who could unfurl a textile rug and create a sense of belonging, anywhere?

In the exploration of belonging, KT questions the meaning we attribute to everyday objects that we place around ourselves; that we invest with meaning, and that, in turn, reinforce our sense of belonging. The rug, like textiles in general, evoke associations of luxury, comfort, security and depth – the physical rug, or even the idea of a rug universally evokes a warm secure feeling.

In these works, the digital rug acts as a metaphor for the textile rug. Its transportation from the physical to the digital world, provides a vehicle through which KT contains, and at the same time, externalizes, visually, the ideas that underpin her internal journey around the notion of belonging.

Much as the rug is a transportable item, KT transports her background in weave, into the digital environment. Her focus has shifted from fabrication to the generation of ideas. Like the weaver builds up a work using a warp and weft, and watches the work emerge from one end of the frame to the other, KT has built-up these images using a combination of digital and historical symbols and motifs to form pattern. The cultural significance loses its meaning in the appropriation.

Here, the artist is concerned with re-interpretation as a means of building her own unique vocabulary of new symbols and imagery to inform the design process.

The warp and weft of these works are digital symbols—the bead, for example, that is reminiscent of brickwork, and the lozenge shape, that frames our computer or television screens. In the process of creating the work, the artist delivers each bead to the screen as a container of information, emotion, history, to which only she is privy. In this way, the Digital Rug acts as a container of multiple, personal, time capsules.

The works have been influenced by the Bauhaus weavers who created balance and symmetry through asymmetry. KT has incorporated a dynamic palette of synthetic Acid colour which is contemporary and positive. KT says: ‘The overall design imperative is to engage emotional responses from the viewer in which differing viewpoints add diversity.’

I approached the work feeling somewhat displaced. I found myself immersed in KTs digital world which hums with the energy of her ideas. As I became more familiar with her world, I found I started to develop a sense of belonging in the process of exploration.

To quote T S Elliot:

‘We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.’