For the past nine years, David Mabb’s work has been based on the textile and wallpaper designs of 19th Century English interior designer, writer and activist William Morris (1834-1896). Mabb’s work on Morris stems from the social, political and market implications of his designs and the continued relevancy of his politics. Many of Mabb’s interpretations or reconfigurations of Morris’ utopian designs have foregrounded their relationship with other forms of cultural production. A Miniature Retrospective consists of nine miniature paintings, which are copies of some of Mabb’s (larger) work by Jaipur based miniaturist Rajendra Sharma. They provide, in miniature, a context in which to see Rhythm 69. Rhythm 69 is a series of 70 paintings in which pages from a 1960s block printed William Morris wallpaper pattern book have been glued onto individual canvases. The pages have been painted with designs by Hans Richter from a 1970 storyboard for a proposed animated film Rhythm 25, based on sketches by Kasimir Malevich dating from 1927. The result is a sequential dialectical exchange between Malevich’s work, as interpreted by Richter, and Morris’ utopian designs.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/26788