Knitting, crochet and handpainted ceramics are not often associated with ostentatiously scaled art. Proving it's possible, however, Portuguese artistJoana Vasconcelos presents a spectacular display of handmade textile forms. Her new installation comprises long, plump trails of bright fabric and nauseating, highly patterned brick-like structures inspired by 'Tetris'. An exuberant collection of supersized soft toys and decorative draught excluders, this is a high-camp, wow-factor playground of objects that sadly lacks conceptual clout.
On the top floor of the gallery a bulbous fabric crown has been sewn from clashing Portuguese textiles. Like some monstrous knitted triffid, a host of giant tendrils falls from this headdress, dripping its tassels and ornaments down the stairwell, curling onto the floor of the gallery beneath. Part of her ongoing 'Valkyrie' series, this apparently pays homage to the Queen in the year of her Jubilee. Although Vasconcelos's works have in the past solicited a cool and clever irony, such as in her over-the-top adornments of the Palace of Versailles, this monarchichal reference somehow doesn't wash here.
While there is mileage in Vasconcelos's approach to feminising the brash and glossy sculptural genre inhabited by the likes of Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami, this exhibition falls flat. Its bonkers craft aesthetic and hyperbolic scale make it at first appear to be a parody, sending up some sanctimonious public art project that could have been the result of hours of community sew offs. Yet the foregrounding of localised cultural motifs draw this installation into rather more uninspiring territory – the artistic transformation of banal materials.