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Textile Patterns Exhibition, major exhibition subsequently published as “Pixelpaisleyportal (the materialisation of imagination in 8 pixelated steps), Zētēsis: The International Journal for Fine Art, Philosophy and the Wild Sciences, Article Press, 2013, Vol 1, No. 2, pp. 104-111.

This work draws attention to a range of actual and metaphorical relations fused together in Wrights practice of focusing on both the overlooked repetitious units of craft and the virtual units of the digital pixel. This dialogical practice, steeped in historical and cross-cultural materialities, is referenced in the form of the Paisley teardrop motif. Wright mobilizes hallucinatory fabrics, the once acknowledged uniform of Psychedelia, towards a contemporary materialisation of the Sublime, informed by her feminist approaches to practice. Central to the work is the use of light as the ethereal substance of the imaginary. The present work, originally emerging from an international group exhibition (2007-8) entitled Exploding the tear drop, takes an original perspective on paisley design, pattern and its dissemination by relying on the paisley boteh and now used to explore how our experience of imagery in the home is transformed by the mechanics of contemporary life. Traditional handcrafted and digital technologies were employed to translate the code of the embroiderer’s chart with stitches and beads to the equivalent in pixels. An intervention as a reflexive work of fine art into a cabinet of historical design objects and textiles dating from the 1800s, the work(s) reflected upon the technologies of production and transformation of the original design through new technologies. By employing contrasting technologies within a work – digital print, embroidery and beadwork –the recognisable paisley boteh was translated into a psychedelic field of opticality and an intense screen of colour and luminosity. The contextualisation/translation was achieved using unusual software programmes like Garden Design and Embroidery Design. The effect was to question the scale and materiality of the items displayed in the case. Because of its both to the historical and cultural context of pattern and decoration, the work was selected for the permanent collection of the Whitworth Gallery.