Anna Caione Tessuti (It. "fabric")

Like the Arte Povera artists of the sixties and seventies, Caione’s practice is concerned with subjective understandings of matter and space; the energies inherent in materials; with vitality and memory.

Caione’s nostalgic sensibility is a way of imagining forward and looking for home; a way to hold or touch something without evaporating it. In Tessuti, Caione engages this poetics of remembrance by reworking a collection of vintage fabrics sourced from the historic Castello Di Masino, Piedmont, now a textiles museum, and surrounds.

These fabrics carry the pleasure that comes from recollection, ‘the trace of a person’s touch and also a sense of obsolescence.’ (Anna Caione, 2011). The legacy of the weaver’s art, they have a storied relationship to cultural taste, mercantile trade and production. They speak of artisans in Imperial workshops; of Europe and the East; market and museum. They tell of the elegant vestments and bourgeois interiors of the Famiglia Savoy and Madama Reale; of opulent rooms entirely decorated with the surplus effect of fresco, mirror, and tapestry; and of the love of colourful stuffs….

Anna Caione is primarily a collage artist. Putting things together by feel – whether they be abstract forms, found objects or colour – Caione’s interaction with materials is both spontaneous and considered. Her aesthetic decisions blend careful refinement and expressive gesture; bareness and exhuberance. Her sensitivity to tonal and formal arrangement always remains acute and the resulting play of opposing forces – movement and stagnation, original and likeness – animates these assemblages…

Extract from exhibition essay by Martina Copley
Independent arts writer and curator
Melbourne 2011.

Biography

Anna Caione teaches art and design at tertiary level in Melbourne. She has exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally, including the successful touring group exhibitions: Via Vai, Comings and Goings, shown in Italy and Melbourne in 2003 and White Out shown at Benalla Gallery & Switchback gallery Victoria and Marlene Antico Gallery, Sydney in 2006. In 2004 Anna Caione was a finalist in several award exhibitions including the John Leslie Art Prize, Gippsland Art Gallery, Victoria and the Metro 5 Gallery Art Award, Melbourne. In 2003 she was awarded second place in the SBS Centenary of Federation Art Award. In 2006 she was a finalist in the McGivern Prize, Maroondah Art Gallery and the John Leslie Art Prize, Gippsland Art Gallery, Victoria( Honourable Mention). During 2004 Caione was invited to exhibit her works at the European Cultural Festival, Genova, Italy.

Anna Caione’s work is represented in corporate, public and private collections in Australia, Italy, Holland and Ireland.

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