Josh Faught's Textile Exhibition at Kendall Koppe Gallery Explores Craft, Identity, and Time

Josh Faught's exhibition 'I Know I Came into This Room for a Reason' at Kendall Koppe Gallery in Glasgow marks the artist's first UK and European gallery presentation. The show features seven handwoven, hand-dyed textile sculptures from 2014, incorporating found ephemera like badges, signs, fake foods, and greeting cards. Faught's work blends postminimalist influences with craft traditions, using techniques such as the 19th-century American 'summer and winter' weaving method seen in jacquard afghan coverlets. His pieces reference identity politics through historical color symbolism, with 'The Mauve Decade' alluding to the 1890s association of mauve with homosexuality. The exhibition explores themes of emotional survival mechanisms, time passage through clocks and calendars, and the political history of textiles in activism, including references to the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Faught's approach combines labor-intensive craftsmanship with contemporary concerns, creating works that challenge conventional art boundaries while maintaining humanistic depth. The exhibition was reviewed in ArtReview's December 2014 issue.