We are collaborating with visual artist Fraser Taylor on a new series of exhibitions inspired by our productions, staged in Theatre Royal Glasgow’s public foyers.
The inaugural exhibition, entitled Back Drops, is a response to our new production of Turandot which opens on Thursday 22 October, and showcases a series of six new textile works by Glasgow-based artist and researcher Mhari McMullan.
Each of the works is a complex fabric collage incorporating techniques including sublimation print (printing an image directly into fabric using heat), patchwork, smocking, and structural knotting, drawing on the opera’s riddles and ritual and the decadent, decaying theatrical world created by director Sir David McVicar.
Mhari’s making process deliberately subverts the viewer's perception; printed folds, loose threads, and physical fragments merge to generate moments of trompe l’œil, confusing what is printed, constructed, or draped. The physical rendering of the textiles becomes a riddle in itself – a dream factory of pattern, process, and illusion that echoes the psychological maze of Puccini’s narrative.
The exhibition builds directly upon the success of the free public exhibition Digital x Hokusai in Scotland: The Life of Hokusai, staged in the foyers of Theatre Royal Glasgow and Festival Theatre Edinburgh in February of this year during performances of our production of Dai Fujikura’s The Great Wave. Following its popularity, we invited Fraser Taylor to curate exhibitions by local artists once or twice a year during our performances at the Theatre Royal.
Back Drops is open to Turandot ticket holders from 5.30pm before evening performances, and 1pm before the matinee performance, as well as free to members of the public on 24, 29 and 30 October, from 2pm – 5pm.
To book tickets for Turandot visit Puccini's Turandot | Scottish Opera