Jennifer Coghill   
Textile Art

Café Curtains consists of seven overlapping hanging panels made from the detritus of our daily coffee and tea rituals: used tea bags, coffee filters and coffee packaging. Originally created as a site-specific window installation in a coffee shop, it echoes the curtains of Viennese coffee houses in the 1800s, where intellectuals congregated, and radical ideas fomented. These cafés often hung lace curtains halfway down the window frame, affording some intimacy and privacy while allowing sunlight to enter.

This re-interpretation elevates the humble origins of these cast-off materials, giving them an unexpected new existence. Café Curtains suggests a new kind of radicalism in a subtle critique of our throw-away consumer culture. It challenges conventional notions of beauty and value, and prompts viewers to re-imagine their own rituals of consumption and waste.

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