Rebecca Ward | aphasia

Influenced by Minimalism, Abstract Art, Post-War Italian Art and Arte Povera, Ward uses the language of abstract painting to explore the canvas as a 3D object. She infiltrates the historically male-dominated field of minimalism and geometric abstraction by using materials and processes long associated with femininity and domesticity such as dyeing, weaving, sewing, textiles and bleaching. Through the iconography of feminine gesture, the work subtly addresses broader social concerns.

Ward has become known for her series of paintings where parts of the canvas are meticulously deconstructed one thread at a time and reconstructed by stitching panels together. The works explore the emotive and expressive power of art through the use of colour palettes that evoke memory and sentiment. In her X series, viewers experience the painting as a multidimensional object. Painted but translucent silk interrupted with horizontal lines creates a surface that allows the structural ‘X’ of the dark wood stretcher bar underneath to be visible.

In further works, Ward continues to express the formalist vocabulary of abstraction in a new manner. Across canvas panels sewn together, monochrome oil paint stripes form regular geometric patterns that investigate the relationship between the painted surface and its base.