Anna Torma | OLIVE

Anna Torma

OLIVE

Sackville, Canada: Nothing Else Press. 2023

105 x 105 cm.

Edition of 50 signed copies

We’ve long admired Anna Torma’s work (and were able to buy a very small piece a couple of years ago) but only met her earlier this year, in Fredericton where her and Roula presented works in a group show together. Here and her partner live about 20 minutes away, in a beautiful purpose-built home that privileges their separate studio spaces. 

The wool and silk shawl we produced with her turned out great. Wear it around your neck or pin it to the wall. Info below. 

Anna Torma is a storyteller, stitching fantastical narratives into large, skillful and elaborately embroidered textile works. Torma employs imagery referencing history, daily life, animals, mythological creatures, fruit, flora and fauna, which form a rich visual lexicon that is playful and sensual, with sometimes dark undertones.

For OLIVE,  Torma excerpts a detail from one of her sprawling woven tales, in order to highlight the "supporting actors" and "background scenery" that are often overlooked. Here, "olive" is invited to take centre stage, a detail that would otherwise be relegated to the role of minor character.

Anna Torma is a Hungarian born, New Brunswick based artist. She translates contemporary content through traditional hand embroidery which she considers as a “mother tongue”, having learned to sew and embroider as a child from her mother and grandmothers. Working on a large scale, she composes wall hangings, which are rooted in this heritage, but are equally related to other visual art mediums like painting and drawing.  

Anna Torma received the prestigious Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. She is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, recipient of the New Brunswick Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts and of the Strathbutler Award from the Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation. For over 40 years,Torma has exhibited her art in Canada and abroad. Many of her works are held in public and private collections around the world. In 2018, Calgary's Esker Foundation presented a major exhibition of the artist's work entitled Book of Abandoned Details. That same year, her work was featured in the exhibition Fait Main/Hand, at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. In 2020 a large-scale solo exhibition titled Permanent Danger was mounted at the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto. She has a full-career retrospective at the Beaverbrook Gallery, Fredericton. www.annatorma.com

OLIVE is available for $125 CDN at the Nothing Else Press Website, here, or at the Pop-Up Shop today at MKG127, from noon to six.