The border that would not behave

Text: an original contemporary arts-review-style practice extract.

The woven panel occupied most of the gallery wall, although it refused to settle into a neat rectangle. Its lower border dipped sharply near one corner, while a band of red crossed the cloth and stopped just before reaching the opposite edge. At first, I found myself mentally correcting it: lifting the corner, completing the stripe, making the whole thing behave.

A closer look made that imagined tidiness seem dull. Knots remained visible where colours changed, and several threads escaped from the surface instead of lying flat. These interruptions were repeated too deliberately to resemble careless mistakes. They gave the eye small obstacles and pauses, turning a simple arrangement of grey and red into something that seemed to shift each time I moved along the wall. The uneven border also preserved a sense of the hands that had pulled and tightened the material.

Deliberate roughness can become its own kind of polish, and one long thread appeared so perfectly misplaced that I suspected it had been arranged for attention. Even so, the panel's irregularities mostly earned their place. A straighter version might have been easier to admire in a single glance, but this one resisted being finished so quickly. Its flaws did not simply decorate the work. They kept the act of looking alive.

In this extract, the writer tries to show that deliberate imperfection makes an artwork more appealing.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.