Moustache-Eagle

Caroline Achaintre’s arresting creations are made from hand-tufted wool. Her process involves pulling wool through the canvas from behind, the compositions thus developing through concentrated labour and intuition. The semi-abstract forms of Moustache-Eagle come together to create an avian, mask-like technicolour apparition, the eye-holes enhancing the work’s sculptural presence and mystic, primitive aura. ‘My processes utilise methods associated with the applied arts,’ Achaintre says. ‘I make those choices not because of my interest in craft, but for their intense, subjective quality … Not knowing the outcome I have to plunge into the process. Interested in the field between abstraction and figuration I try to stay in the uncomfortable middle ground, the in-between. As viscosity is for example a condition between liquid and solid I try to capture a moment when my creation is not the one thing any more and not the other one yet. My interest in duality often informs my choices, as for example shaggy wool, which can be attractive and repulsive in the same time. Many of my anthropomorphic sculptures more or less evoke the human head. The result is a range of primitive, carnivalesque and sexual forms reminiscent at once of the Commedia dell’Arte, German Expressionism and cheap horror films.’