Listing Details
Gordon Crook
1921 – 2011
Crook arrived in new Zealand in 1972 aged 51. The first half of Crook’s life was spent teaching and designing in England. He was awarded an ex-serviceman’s grant to study at St Martin’s School of Art in London after a 7 year carer in the British merchant navy and Royal Air Force. He was enamoured with all aspects of textile design and manufacture, in particular the ancient works. As pioneering weaver Peter Collingwood has described;
“Crook was attracted to tapestry by the discipline it imposed on his vision and design. Nothing purely accidental exists in tapestry; everything used – tone, form and texture – is deliberate. An area once woven cannot be altered or worked over with the ease possible in painting. When he has an idea for a tapestry, Crook first makes a full-scale coloured cartoon. This is done very freely with no feeling of restraint and may embrace unusual techniques, such as collage. He then traces the cartoon, but only outlining the main masses of colour and not bothering about the fine subtleties of tone. This tracing is then stretched between two horizontal rollers on his loom … so that it lies flat behind the warp. Whenever the warp is turned on, the tracing can be turned on a corresponding amount. Then, following the tracing, Crook weaves the tapestry. As he does this, he is constantly consulting the [original] cartoon on the wall beside him and constantly deciding how best to interpret its painted subtleties in tapestry techniques”
Considerable publicity was achieved and crook’s career took off in 1978 when he was awarded a QEII Arts Council grant to provide banners for the New Zealand Chancery in Washington.
His practice in New Zealand also saw him change his way of working. Smaller works he wove himself and the larger works were created with New Zealand weavers Lesley Nicholls, a tapestry weaver from the Artweave workshop in Wellington, and Trish Armour. The imagery used is inspired by his fascination for Pacific and Oceanic themes.
Work Dimensions: 835mm W x 875mm
Framing: Framed
Framed Dimensions: 1000mm W x 1060mm H
Freight Note: Due to the size of this work freight will be calculated post purchase
