WHITE FLAG BLACK FLAG

For the past two years Marla Panko has been working with fabric in her art practice. Her mother taught fashion and textiles throughout her career and her influence ensured in Marla a love of all things sewn.  Although she remain grounded in painting and collage, her interest in formalism and approach to compositional construction is translated through textiles in a way Marla finds both exciting and intriguing.  The use of fabric allows the immediacy of collage and encourages her process of alteration and layering as ideas develop. She has adopted a deliberately primitive stitch which evokes fragility and expresses the humbleness she feels as an ‘outsider’ fabric artist.

This work explores the nature of contrast and similarity— the uniformity of white on white, juxtaposed with its homogeneous black opposite. The reference to cultural or ethnic groups is suggested through the iconography and format of flags. There are also allusions to surrender (white flag) & anarchism (black flag).