Banners of Persuasion

Weaving between the lines of an up-to-date social yarn

SAY "tapestry" to most people and they think of either the Battle of Hastings and trying to find King Harold getting poked in the eye in a dusty school textbook, or a rather wooly pursuit favoured by little old ladies.

Well, think again because a new exhibition at The Dairy gallery — Demons Yams and Tales, stitches new life into what a lot of people thought was a dead medium.

Three years in the making, the 14 tapestries explore subjects ranging from fictive landscapes and architectural abstraction to fashion and flora.

Adjusting to the unfamiliar genre, and seamlessly adapting to unfamiliar textures, surfaces and tools, each of the 15 artists has found ways to expand their abilities.

Kara Walker's stark image of a lynching in post-civil-war America — a haunting scene of racially motivated violence, and Grayson Perry's Bayeux tapestry of modern nines — a montage of terror imagery from Osama bin Laden to the Twin Towers and guarded oil fields.

As the title suggests, tapestry is an archaic medium, but Demons, Yarns and Tales,reveals its complex past while showing it is very much a workable material for contemporary art.

Demons, Yarns and Tales is at The Dairy, 7 Wakefield Street, WCI, until November 22.