Unexpected – arranged by nature
Found and bound – developing ideas
Have spent many happy hours exploring Barton-on-Humber in all sorts of weather, researching the area, foraging and recording. It’s an exciting prospect to develop work for an exhibition at The Ropewalk Gallery. I shall be showing a collection of work with a fellow artist Jan Miller in September 2020.
It’s all over now until the exhibition moves to Oldham in December. There was a wonderful response in Stroud and here is a great quote below from Arts Council England!
“Very impressed, not only by how DIS/rupt addresses the challenges we face at personal and global levels, but also how artists and makers have chosen to disrupt and challenge their own practices -innovative and powerful – thank you”
Phil Gibby Area Director South West. Arts Council England.
It’s been a long time since I last added a post. I have been busily involved in making my work for the TSG exhibition DIS/rupt to be shown at the Stroud Select Festival 2017. We were urged to respond to the uncertainty in our world, full of disruption in all sorts of ways.
You can see mini interviews on Studio Postings on the TSG blog. Here are some of my responses to the questions posed by Sheila Mortlock for the blog.
I am interested in the ecology and environment and how landscapes are changing and evolving and for this exhibition I have been inspired the story of the peat cutting in Ireland where it started as a domestic activity for the home. Over the years, it developed into an industrial process leaving scars in the landscape and using up resources created
over thousands of years.
I have completed two pieces that are inspired by the black bogs and deep trenches created by peat cutting over the centuries. Despite the changes made by human intervention nature takes over eventually and we tend to look upon it and enjoy it as it is.
Sketchbook page
try to record my responses to places that I know, have walked and discovered by following a path, discovering unexpected things and been surprised by what I stumble upon. Peat Lands is the next in my current series of Cloth Stories, as J K Rowling says: ‘There’s always room for a story that can transport people to another place.’
Peat Lands – fabric and stitch concertina book
Peat Lands revisited is a response to the repetitive mechanical process of peat cutting for commercial use.
Peat Lands revisited – printed crepe de chine
There is a story in everything and there are few places accessible to us that are truly wild and untouched. Despite catastrophic events or intervention by man they still have a beauty of their own as nature takes over. It’s in the making of something that we really get to know it and as I have discovered when dipping my toe into the digital world with the printed silk ‘craft helps to make technology human’.
More information about DIS/rupt can be found on TSG website https://textilestudygroup.wordpress.com and all information and booking details about the programme of workshops which tie into the exhibition and lead by several TSG members can be found on the SIT select website at this link. SIT select 2017
Two wonderful, thought- provoking days about innovation, collaboration, sustainability, health and well being and social innovation. It was an amazing opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with a wide range people, experts in their fields and a diverse group of makers, all passionate about what they do.
You can find out much more on the Crafts Council website. Look out for some associated events coming up in other regions and of course for the next Make:Shift conference in 2018!
I’m looking forward to going to Make:Shift, the 2 day conference in Manchester next week, exploring craft and innovation.
10-11 November 2016 at the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester
http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/makeshift/
Disappointed that I can’t stay on and go to Maker Assembly at Madlab in Manchester on Sat 12th. November
I was lucky enough to see two works by Yinka Shonibare at the Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate and the new exhibition, J M W Turner, Adventures in Colour – both wonderful!
What a wonderful morning visiting this new gallery in Kings Lynn!
Sunlight & Gravity – work by Roger Ackling and Richard Long is on exhibition until 30th October 2016.
http://www.groundworkgallery.com
