Dinah Prentice 're-meaning' herself.

by Celia Eddy
published: 12/08/2001
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This is the third in this series charting the subsequent progress of the four leading British textile artists who exhibited in the touring exhibition, Take 4 (1998 – 1999). During the ensuing two years, all four have moved on and developed, and none of them more radically than Dinah Prentice.

'Maenads on a Moebius Strip'

Writing last December, she told me that following Take 4 she felt she had to ‘re-mean’ herself through changes in medium and image, a process which she found very destablilising but which has resulted in a radical change of direction. On reflection, she came to feel that the dominant sensibility of Take 4 was modernism and that she wanted to incorporate post-modernist feeling into her work. This has resulted in work which is much less polemically ‘feminist’ in tone and intention and which invites a much freer and more discursive involvement on the part of the viewer. Note that none of these new works incorporate the text which was such a significant feature in the works she exhibited in Take 4 – we are being left to make our own interpretations.

'Maenads Over the Moon'

The works shown here were inspired by her discovery, in 2000, of an illustration of a Roman copy of a little Greek statue of a Maenad (i.e. a female member of the orgiastic cult of Dionysius). From this, Prentice created a sculpture of her own which she made in several sizes and in four different versions - Greek figures were attached to a mobius strip, producing a very complex construction. She then took photographs of them from many angles and has since then used these views to make large drawings and small sewn objects.

'Maenads En Route'

As well as the large pieces shown here, she produced small chiffon works, 24ins. X 36ins. and some large drawings, all of which were shown in the London University of Guildhall and in Leicester University in 2000.

'Maenad with Head in Air'

© Celia Eddy