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Woven Landscape: wall covering council chamber

About this artwork.

Textile designer Aleksandra Gaca (born 1969) designed the wall covering for the new council chamber of Groningen city hall. Inspired by the movement and expression of the paintings by Groningen artist association De Ploeg, she created a panoramic abstract landscape where waving grass, cloudy skies and changing light play a central role.

Architectural firm Happel Cornelisse Verhoeven renovated the city hall for the Groningen municipality and invited Gaca to collaborate. For the new council chamber with a glass skylight realised above the former central light court, she created a monumental wall covering consisting of no less than 36 panels that enclose the chamber. With this panoramic wall covering, Gaca brings nature indoors; visitors are given the sense of being surrounded by farmland, waving grass, cloudy skies, and changing light - the vistas so characteristic of the Groningen landscape. To realise this, Gaca selected a number of rural scenes painted by De Ploeg and zoomed in on the details. The fine and bold brush strokes of the moving grass structures in Johan Dijkstra’s Landscape Near Aduard, for example, were an inspiration. So too the flowing lines in his ‘Kerkje te Oostum’, the watercolour gradients by Alida Jantina Pott, and the layering in Hendrik Werkman’s printing techniques for De Ploeg.

For the woven textures of the fabric, Gaca translated details from the paintings into abstract patterns that she played with much as a painter would. The result is a playful and surprising composition of different basic textures superimposed in different directions, referencing Werkman’s layered printing technique.

The subtle colour palette consists of a combination of natural and olive-green tones that match the equally natural look of the refined interior with wooden furniture designed by the architects. The textile designer also used four different bindings and combinations of four colours of matt and shiny yarn in a soft gradient.

The design for the woven fabric by Aleksandra Gaca was developed and realised in collaboration with the TextielMuseum in Tilburg. The company Oostendorp was responsible for the installation.

Text: Viveka van de Vliet

Facts & Figures.

  • Year of creation
    2022

  • Collection
    Town Hall Collection

  • Technic
    Woven