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Pretty Deadly: New Work by Michael Brennand-Wood

An exhibition with accompanying book of the same title, which was held at The Naughton Gallery, Queen’s University, Belfast between 16 October and 8 November 2009. The book is single-authored and it operates as both catalogue and monograph, with McBrinn's 5000 word essay at its centre. As well as writing, and editing, the accompanying publication McBrinn proposed, conceptualised, selected and installed the exhibition. The work was made by a single artist, Michael Brennand-Wood, and comprised over 30 individual pieces – largely made as part of Brennand-Wood’s AHRC Fellowship at the School of Art and Design of the University of Ulster. The work was very much a culmination of many of Brennand-Wood’s artistic preoccupations over the past three decades. In response to the innovative and cross-disciplinary nature of the artist’s work McBrinn's accompanying text required complex theoretical framing which drew on a wide range of popular culture, Marxist, Feminist and Queer Theory. His text also sought to challenge Feminist readings of embroidery, which have ironically perpetuated notions of femininity and gender as embedded in craft, and through an innovative use of Queer Theory, largely drawn from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, McBrinn aimed to reinterpret and open up Brennand-Wood’s work for wider discussion. Subsequently, following the success of the exhibition, Michael Brennand-Wood was awarded the large public art commission for the new McClay Library at Queen’s University Belfast in 2010. McBrinn was subsequently commissioned to write an overview of Brennand-Wood’s career for Selvedge magazine and then a series of studies of contemporary artists who work with stitched textiles for Embroidery magazine (vol. 63, no.’s 3, 4 and 5). This exhibition and publication are, however, an initial stage in a major research project entitled Queering the Subversive Stitch: Men and the Culture of Needlework (Bloomsbury, forthcoming).