History of the Centre.
About the MTC Celebration Tapestry.
 To celebrate the new buildings Colin Crumplin was
commissioned to design a new tapestry to hang in the Michael Tippett
Centre auditorium.
Colin Crumplin.
Colin Crumplin has had eleven solo exhibitions and taken part in forty
group
exhibitions in the UK and abroad since 1970. He is Reader in Fine
Art at Bath Spa
University College. He writes:
"The tapestry, which has been made this year, is a same-size
transcription of a painting I finished in 1996."
"All the paintings I have made in the 1990's are in two parts: a
first section that appears 'abstract', and a second section, which
appears to represent a photographic image. The first section is made by
spreading acrylic paint by hand on the unstretched canvas laid on the
floor. This is then folded, making a monoprint and giving rise to a
chance-derived image. I make many of these, photograph them and, using
these photographs as a kind of notebook, consider over a period what
other image to set with them. In some of my paintings the correspondence
between the panels is very obvious and the image is one that many people
have seen in the first section. Some are less obvious."
"In the case of Flood (Florence) the black section at the top
is read as 'suggesting' flooding water. I painted the second section
from a photograph of the flood which overtook part of Florence in 1966."
"My interest is in painting and 'picturing' and our prodigious memory
for images. We describe things by saying they 'look like' others and the
naming of configurations in stars and clouds for example, pervades
periods and cultures."
 Christine Sawyer.
The tapestry has been made by Christine Sawyer. Christine was
born in Yorkshire, and trained at Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, which is
now part of Bath Spa University College. She taught Art and Design
in secondary schools for many years, and was then appointed Lecturer in
Textiles at Rolle College, Exmouth, a post she left in 1976 in order to
start a family. In the mid 1980's Christine became seriously
interested in the medium of woven tapestry, and in 1997 was accepted onto
the Crafts Council Selected Index. In 1991 she became an active
member of the South West Textile Group. | 
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