Untitled (machine errors) By Evi Olde Rikkert

Untitled (machine errors)

Part of series of eight unique, tufted carpets. 

Produced by: Artist
Year: 2021
Made in: Italy
Material: 100% Italian sheep wool Dimensions: 2.2 x 2.2m

Undyed, tufted wool carpet from the series Machine Errors by Evi Olde Rikkert, 2021. This series of eight unique textile works are the final step in a research project exploring the production chains of wool: from sheep in the field to yarn in the factory to finished product. The carpets’ design reconsiders ‘machine errors’ through the lens of intentional imperfections – in this case, long strands of warp jutting out from the main body of the fabric – that make each piece irreplicable. Identifying as an artist rather than a traditional carpet maker, Evi embraces these flaws during production. The floor pieces resemble grassy landscapes, with sections grazed away by sheep; some are symmetrical, while others are not.

Evi Olde Rikkert (NL 1994) lives and works between the Netherlands and Italy. She holds an MFA in Site Specific art (InSitu) from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (BE) and a BA in Fashion Design from Polimoda in Florence (IT). She previously collaborated with the Phoebus Foundation textile collection (2019, Antwerp, BE) and received a grant from the Mondriaan Fund NL (2020–2021). Evi Olde Rikkert views art as a way to ask questions and make contemporary issues tangible. Her projects come to life through dialogue and interdisciplinary collaborations, for example, with shepherds and workers in the textile industry.

The carpets from the series Machine Errors are the final step in a research project exploring the production chains of wool. At the start of this research project, Olde Rikkert joined shepherd Armando Zocchi on a livestock trek. He tends a flock of seventy sheep and forty-five cows in Alta Valtellina, a mountain valley in Northern Italy. She then connected with factories in the Italian textile regions of Biella and Bergamo to have the raw wool spun into yarn; while this may seem like a logical next step in the process, it actually wasn’t. The textile industry in Italy, one of the last in Europe, typically doesn’t work with itchy Italian wool with short fibers but rather with higher-quality Australian merino.

During the first presentation of the carpets, Olde Rikkert invited you to sit on the carpets and meditate – not on your own breath, but on the idea of growing sheep’s wool. There were earphones on the floor playing hypnotic industrial beats based on sampled sounds of pumping milking machines, but they also evoke the sounds of shearing, spinning, weaving, and tufting machines. The undyed, monochrome woolen carpets owe their texture to machine errors that occurred during the production process.