Jacquard woven throw/blanket
220x160cm, washable.
Limited edition of 28 .
 
This Artists Throw is Yelena Popova’s initial sketch for a large jacquard woven stage curtain for Solway Hall community centre in Whitehaven, produced as part of a new public art commissions programme ‘Deep Time: Commissions for the Lake District Coast’.
https://deeptime.uk/artwork/yelena-popova/
 
The Ray Cat is a proposition by the philosophers Françoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri responding to the problem of how to alert inhabitants of the earth in thousands of years time of the existence of nuclear waste in a particular location. They proposed to alter the DNA of domestic cats so they would change colour if exposed to radiation.
 
Popova’s design takes inspiration from the 16th Century millefleurs tapestry ‘Hunting Scene with a Unicorn’ held at the V&A collection in London. The Ray Cat, currently as mythological as the Unicorn, plays in a post-industrial landscape filled with pipes, electricity sockets, electromagnetic waves and the remains of UK’s first nuclear facility. The overall pattern is formed by the merging zig-zag and wavy lines, which traditionally represent Cumbrian mountains and the sea.