Mythographica

Marinelle Basson

Exhibition Dates:
Friday 29 May – Sunday 7 June, 2026
Monday to Saturday: 10:15am – 4:00pm
Sunday: 11:00am – 3:00pm

Opening Event:
Friday 29 May, 2026
5:30pm – 7:30pm

A collection of prints, drawings and constructions inspired by the rich history of myths with spinning, weaving, threads, and webs at their core. Myths are not literally true, but they provide a way of looking at the world, a way of thinking about its creation, evolution and destruction.

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When I make string or felt, when I spin or weave, my hands move in the same way as the hands of my ancient kin thousands of years ago. Somehow, this active, tactile way of connecting with the distant past became a double lens of textiles and myth. Mythographica is the result of looking through this combined lens, at a world which feels exceptionally chaotic, the future – of humankind and the planet – particularly uncertain.

A felted cloth with its matted tangles is a fabric of chaos, whereas a woven cloth with its grid of warp and weft is a fabric of order. The works explore the continuum between these extremes: pushing chaos towards order, and vice versa.

Tangles and threads permeate a vast array of phenomena at many scales, from microscopic to inter-stellar. They can be seen in cellular structures, twining vines, power-lines, ship-rigging, images of galaxies, the mangled steel remains of bombed-out buildings… Everyone will make their own connections.