“India is a place where colour is doubly bright. Pinks that scald your eyes, blues that you could drown in.” ~ Kiran Millwood Hargrave, The Girl of Ink and Stars

camilleriparismode is proud to be hosting a project involving the unprecedented collaboration between a visual artist and a design practice, in the creation of an exclusive fine rug collection inspired by a series of paintings.

Conceived by DAAA Haus, the idea behind this exclusive rug collection was simple, yet a true testament of the life of someone living art and design ceaselessly.

When Keith Pillow was travelling to India for the first time in 2019, exploring the possibility of setting up a satellite design and architecture studio in Mumbai, he immediately fell in love with the country, its traditions and spectacular craftsmanship.

Experiencing the production of the exquisite rugs first-hand, he was intrigued by the idea of developing something unique, which would fuse the Maltese and Indian cultures. Whilst pondering on the concept, Keith recalled an art collection of a fellow countryman and friend: artist James Vella Clark. The synergy that follows is a reinterpretation of James’ works, intricately reproduced in an unconventional form of luxurious rugs.

This project brought several creatives together with the admirable craftsmanship of one of the finest hand-knotting rug manufacturers in India – Cocoon Rugs. This collaborative project is a literal convergence of talent, vision and design.

About the Convergence series collection

In 2016, James Vella Clark started exploring the ‘abstracted’ traits in his past works and sought of reinterpreting these traits into a completely abstract dimension. Therefore, his abstract work should be viewed as the product of an ongoing process that started many years ago.

The starting point that led to his current abstract work was the source of light as the one and only focal point, which in turn became a source for all the colour plains surrounding it.

In fact, when viewing an art piece, we tend to first want to establish a point of contact, a reference point to which we can relate. Only then, does one feel prepared to explore other parts of the work.

The work over the past few years led to a collection that formed the main body of paintings for CONVERGENCE; a solo exhibition hosted in February 2019. In this latest abstract work, the viewer is now being challenged to assess the work as a whole; a destination constituted by many different plains without a clear reference point. In most works, however, there is an interrelation of different masses of colour which seem to converge to a more specific, yet not so obvious, reference point.