MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

TENUGUI / CATALOGUE
Jonathan Ellery

Mergers and Acquisitions is series of seven religiously and politically focused, hand printed, Tenugui.

A Tenugui is a Japanese piece of cloth, made from cotton, to a traditional size and format.

Ellery’s Tenugui have been produced by hand in Osaka using the ‘Chusen’ production approach. ‘Chosen’ is a traditional method of dying using stencil paper and resist paste. Since the dye infiltrates the cloth, the patterns appear on both sides.

Mergers and Acquisitions is fuelled by the political and the religious, bringing together graphic elements to form patterns and frictional alliances. It is Ellery’s interpretation of the swirling political and religious world that surrounds us.

The patterns and symbols created by Ellery are bizarre.

The first, for instance, is made from three political identities: Golden Dawn (the far-right Greek party), Right Sector (the far-right Ukrainian nationalist party) and The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (a secular political party operating in Lebanon).

Another is made from the identities of the Dixiecrats (an American organisation formed in 1948 by conservative white southern Democrats committed to states’ rights and the maintenance of segregation, and opposed to federal intervention into race) and the Black Panthers.

The catalogue, as well as simply archiving the seven Tenugui, brings its own political and conceptual voice to the piece.

A great deal of the catalogue is dominated by the colours of nationalism, in this case the red white and blue of Ellery’s own country and of others.

A fabric piece of one of the seven screen printed Tenugui is bound into each of the catalogues.

Published 2016
Published by Browns Editions
Designed by Ellery/Browns
Softback
195mm x 250mm
48 pages
7 colour images
1 fabric swatch
First edition of 150
ISBN 978-0-9928194-4-6