Ataphol Sujirapinyokul

November 7 – December 29 2013

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Knutig is an installation by a young artist who works across genres of craft, design and visual art.

‘Knutig’ is a Swedish term for gnarled. Sujirapinyokul uses banana tree fibres and other natural materials to create forms derived from the natural world. Employing methods of knitting and knotting the artist plays with the nostalgic aura of traditional craftwork while introducing a contemporary sensibility through scale and spatial experience.

Sujirapinyokul’s woven structures are icons of time past and the artist understands nostalgia as a recognition of loss, already embedded within the preserved materials. The artist is also concerned with a Buddhist homage to unconventional time. Knutig provides a meditation on processes of origin, growth and decline and while staging a revealing engagement with the practice of craft for contemporary contexts, disentangles linear constructs of time passing and time past.

Ataphol Sujirapinyokul is based in Bangkok. A graduate of the University of Boras in Sweden and Thailand’s King Mongkut Institute of Technology Ladkrabaeng, he exhibits internationally and has won a number of awards. Exhibitions include J-D Lagöm (2013), RMA Institute, Bangkok; A White Kale Object (2010), Åhaga, Borås; and Centre of Urban Culture (2010) at Kino Siska in Ljubljana. Sujirapinyokul’s awards include 1st Prize (2010) for his TEXTILE BOOK at the University of Ljubljana and 2nd Prize (2007) for Gift Design at Thailand’s Department of Export Promotion. He was the recipient of a Thai Royal Government Scholarship (2008 -2010) and his works are regularly profiled in the media.