Areez Katki, Eleven thoughts form (conflation of mischief and pleasure), 2020. Cotton hand embroidery over olive striped handwoven Khadi, 42 x 84cm. Courtesy: the artist and Tim Melville Gallery, Auckland.

In Notes & Methods, Areez Katki presents a suite of seven new embroidered hand-loomed Khadi cloth panels alongside a selection of works from 2019 as an introduction to his poetic, contextually rich, and technically detailed practice. Katki describes his gestures on cloth as “residual effects of my investigation and documentation … self-reflective matter … filtered retentions of memory from my ancestral home in Bombay, Mumbai.”

Notes & Methods explores the visual and material language of three women: the artist’s mother Yasmin Lakdawalla, Swedish artist and mystic Hilma af Klint, and the early 20^th century political activist Annie Besant. By recording an embroidered response to the thoughts, messages and notebooks of these three seemingly unrelated women the artist hopes to “quell the domestic servitude of cloth … and transfigure the homely napkin, handkerchief or upholstery fragment into a taut tableau.”

Notes & Methods is Katki’s first solo exhibition with Tim Melville Gallery.

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