RUDE

“These are rugs to roll around on, with lumps and bulges to grab hold of.” – Faye Toogood

 There’s nothing neutral about Rude: Toogood’s third collaboration with cc-tapis. “I didn’t want to do something expected. Rugs can end up bland. Background. Something you pile furniture on, forget about, stamp all over. I’m proposing something much bolder.” Rude is a collection of sensual, sculptural rugs bringing together high craft and hijinks.

The mischievous motifs and provocative colours were in part inspired by Faye’s visit to an exhibition of Francis Bacon’s paintings. “There’s nobody quite like Bacon to bring you back to corporeality with a jolt. All that visceral fleshliness. Vivid pink and bloody red jarring with orange and lilac. It’s not necessarily the shapes or subjects in the paintings that I wanted to reference, but the feeling the exhibition gave me… that lingered in my guts”

Suggestive shapes bump up against vivid colour. “In Rude there is a little of the profane and a little of the profound. Yes, I am poking fun, but I am also making a statement about what it means to inhabit a body. And what that means personally for me: an artist inhabiting a female body that is changing. As time passes, I feel connected to my body in a different way, and I see beauty and sexuality from a wildly different perspective.”

Rude are Rugs of irregular shapes and radical textures. Each individual piece is a main character. “I like that you could create an entire interior from one of these rugs. You can drape them over shapes or hang them from the wall.”

Rude pairs Toogood’s restless experimentation with cc-tapis’ unmatched craftsmanship. “cc-tapis are always up for meeting my challenges. With “Doodle” we translated the subtle, painterly gestures of artworks on paper into wool. With “Inventory” we made rugs inspired by post-industrial materials from Toogood’s archive - vulcanized rubber and security mesh rendered in soft furnishings.” Rude is even more experimental and ambitious. Faye Toogood’s emotional and playful approach has inspired the team at cc-tapis to see new possibilities within their skills and technology.

“We worked on each artwork individually, not taking into consideration or being influenced by the techniques or knotting qualities which had been used for the others, merging a menagerie of craft within the same collection.” - Daniele Lora, CC-Tapis Art Director.

Textures take on new scale. Planes of colour are developed with greater depth and complexity. And for Toogood, the collaboration has pushed the studio to rethink and redefine the objectality of a rug.

Rugs are availble to purchase at cc-tapis.com

Milan Design Week
16th-21st April
Piazza Santo Stefano 10
20121 Milan