Edition of 3 of 8

Unique multiple with hand applied real gold leaf

Pigment Ink on sustainable bamboo Awagami washi paper

118 x 84 cm (46.46 x 33.07 in)

This tessellation is closely related to Sardines I. The base tiles are exactly the same. The difference is in the substitution tile – rather than the paths connecting at the apex, the paths connect at the mid point. This gives the tile a different structure. Here the paths start from the lower left midpoint and ending at the same point, rather than next to the apex as in Sardines I. From a distance, there is a different gestalt – more star shaped like a snowflake, less rhomboid The path is picked out in gold by textile craftsmen from Central Java, with the kind assistance of acclaimed Indonesian textile artist Baron Manangsan.

This pair of tessellations clearly illustrate the qualities I find fascinating about these complex tilings, they are repetitive, but in a scalar way our brains can only sense but not really process. We feel this in nature, for instance in geological formations which form fractal expressions of the chemical properties of a mineral – there is a kind of gestalt form to the rocks we recognize, but there is variation within the system such that we find the variation natural rather than constructed. This tiling has a slightly different “DNA” or “signature” and we can sense it immediately without needing to analyse it – we must have in-built modules in our brain that are highly tuned to subtle differences in patterns.