In this issue we are exploring the use of textiles in contemporary art. While fabric, wool, silk and textiles have been a wonderful source of creativity since time began, as a medium it has now taken centre stage in Contemporary art with art practitioners using it to draw, make sculptures, use it for performance and create exciting works. From Emin's huge calico and wool drawings, Sheila Hicks huge sculptural installations and Phyllida Barlow's use of fabric to challenge our ideas of space we want to see how you are using it?
Here we celebrate all this textile with these bold, exciting and challenging works .
Artist name: Milly Aburrow
Title: Lidl Vuitton
Description: The Lidl Vuitton pattern, shown on the garment and as the background, were inspired by the concept that there is a hierarchy in every avenue of consumerism, even through supermarket brands. This is how I gained inspiration to combine high-end fashion garments to supermarket branding - by combining these two elements and manipulating the Lidl logo (stereotypically, and snobbishly seen as low-end) it portrays how advertising, using different font and colours is identified, seen and perceived, alongside context.
Instagram: @portfolio.milly
Artist name: Dom Blower
Title: The Judgement of Paris
Description: ‘The Judgement of Paris’ is part of a series of soft sculpture primarily inspired by the textile art of Louise Bourgeois. The theme is part of a current interest in the story of the Iliad and the Trojan War. Initially informed by the Troy exhibition at the British Museum. I see frightening parallels between this brutal mythological tale of the consequences of - pointless warfare, duplicity, populist betrayal, epidemic disease and elemental destruction , and our current world order.
Instagram: @domblower
Artist name: Melanie Jordan
Title: DOWN THE MATERNAL LINE
Description: A felted woollen placenta, that reflects on the connection between mothers and daughters through time, down the maternal line.
Instagram: @meljordan6936
Artist name: Rowan Bridgwood
Title: Cardinal Points
Description: ‘Cardinal Points’ is a hand embroidered piece exploring womanhood and the challenges women face in their everyday lives. A woman’s life is often a balancing act between what is expected of her and what she wants for herself. She is guided by red cardinals, a bird which in several cultures symbolises a message of hope and perseverance from loved ones who have passed on. This piece is a celebration of all the strong women who came before who have blazed a trail for us to follow and continue for women yet to come.
Instagram: @rowan.bridgwood
Artist name: Vinay Hathi
Title: Primark Birkin Bag
Description: Primark Birkin Bag made 2013. Highlighting wealth inequality and how retail caters to it.
On April 2013, the eight-story Rana Plaza commercial building collapsed in Bangladesh. At least 1,127 people died and over 2,438 were injured. The factory housed a number of garment factories employing around 5,000 people. The day before the building collapsed, other businesses had closed but garment factory owners pressurized employees to report for work. Clothing label Primark were found amongst the dead. Primark paid compensation and emergency aid of $200 each to the victims of the collapse. First exhibited in 2017 with www.cultivategallery.com Interact Show - Coate Studios, Hackney. Made from discarded wool carpet, hose pipe, cupboard door handles, brass letterbox and vinyl stickers. Size 110 x 90 x 50 cm (H x W x D). https://vinay.mozello.com
Instagram: #vinayhathi @vinayhathi
Artist name: Natalie Oliphant
Title: Fertility
Description: I apply thousands of discarded mementos, clothing, fabric, hardware, jewellery one piece at a time, on to a repurposed body form creating a rich texture. I created 'Fertility' to recognize the difficulty in conceiving for many women worldwide. The challenge is to guide the eye to every angle of the sculpture. To celebrate a woman's form, beauty and struggle.
Instagram: @natalie_oliphant_art
Artist name: Sam LEE
Title: Evolve
Description: Installation art work made using printed textiles plus re-used found textiles/plastics and formed into parts of an alien landscape inspired by a science fiction short story about a planet that transforms after the rains come. this only happens every 10,000 years!!
Instagram: @samleeartfire3
Artist name: Jane Walker
Title: City with Scars
Description: My work is about cities, one of the themes is how fragile civilization is, it does not take much to tear it apart. I damage the material to think of how much our environment is under stress, things are not running smoothly.
Instagram: @gillianjanewalker
Artist name: Nathalie Frost
Title: Queen Of Indecision
Description: This piece forms one part of a body of work named 'The Years Lie In Wait For You'. I use damaged antique textile fragments with hand stitching.
The project explores ageing and what gives us our lines and marks in our own skin and whether we choose to cover them with procedures or to celebrate them.
Instagram: @nathalie.frost
Artist name: Kelly Umpleby
Title: Spaciotemporal Chamber
Description: A unification of time, space, and memory are the driving forces of my work, reflecting on familial ties and thinking about life, tradition and how each of us connect to one another. My Spaciotemporal Chamber enraptures the encounter of human interaction to create a meaningful phenomenological experience that encapsulates memory and experience, through the process of weaving,
Instagram: @ke11_u_Artist
Artist name: Annis
Title: Kama Sutra of London
Description: The work is celebrating the incredible cultural and sexual diversity of London, a city where everyone can feel at home. Now more than ever, this diversity should be celebrated. I was making this textile piece over 2020-2021, I had some difficulty accessing thread for my embroidery as a lot of shops where closed and many business on the web was not working.
Instagram: @annisharrison
Artist name: Laura Bodo Lajber
Title: Gillard The Golden Bird
Description: Gillard The Golden Bird is part of a series of handmade totems. They are friends of The Lady of the Forest and are inspired by the relationship between Human Beings and Mother Nature. Each piece is a challenge as a personality has to be created so that each totem can find its own voice. The fabrics, the thread, the colours and textures tell the story of each creature of the Forest.
Instagram: @bodolajberart
Artist name: Inge Prins van WIjngaarden
Title: PATCHwork MATCHwork pART 6, 120x120cm.
Description: Inge fully masters working with cardboard. Her next step in working with this material is to make wall hangings and PATCHworks from cardboard. She plays with the build-up of the relief and uses countless different possibilities. Her fascination with haberdashery and craft techniques have led her to develop PATCHworks from recycled cardboard. Quite a search with a good result. At the moment she has let go of the figurative work, she is currently working on Patchworks without a frame, making it look even more like a tapestry.
The idea of making PATCHworks from this recycled material has arisen from many studies of cardboard. Working in this format is quite a challenge. The design of the large patchworks is custom designed for the space where the work will be located. A nice extra is that this technique, in combination with the material, also has a sound-damping effect.
Instagram: @ilpvw
Artist name: Abbie Cairns
Title: ATRS Collection
Description: The ATRS Collection is a reflective series that I have used to document and work out my identity as an artist-teacher-researcher-student. All work in the collection uses calico as the base and the works are intended to be hung on the wall elevating the text on them from reflective writing to art. Obstacles come in the shape of time restraints as creating the works can be a slow process.
Instagram: @abbiecairnsportfolio
Artist name: Carys Reilly
Title: Conditione Seconde
Description: “These dispositional hypnoid states often, it would seem, grow out of daydreams which are so common even in healthy people, and to which needlework and similar occupations render women especially prone”. This work was created in response to Freud's theories of why women weave, and is based on a dream I had whilst working on my project on women, textiles and psychiatry. I wanted the final image to be surreal and fun, but it was difficult to work on it and ensure it maintained a light-hearted air when the dream itself was actually scary and nightmarish at the time.
Instagram: @carysreillystudio
Artist name: Jane Fairhurst
Title: Fetishes for Uncertain Times
Description: The Sculptures resulted from research into protective forms of magic, amulets, talismans and fetish objects and are a response to unsettling global politics and increasing climate change. Sewing asymmetrical off-cuts was challenging and the final shape was always an unknown until filled with wadding. The metal stands were commissioned from a local blacksmith.
Instagram: @jane.fairhurst
Artist name: DIANA TAYLOR
Title: Through the Needle’s Eye’ (2020)
Description: Various fabrics, screen-prints and embroidery threads onto stitched canvas. 290 x 160cm. The memories that textiles hold for us, embodied and embedded within ourselves and our relation to the people that inhabited them, the smell of clothes, the roughness of a texture, can transport us back in time. For me, it is the textiles within the home, like needlework, hangings, curtains etc., that leave an imprint on my practice; these are the materials that remain after the loss of someone; the memories of the tapestries and the tapestries left unfinished. These works became ways to preserve the past, by bringing them into a new, reassembled present.
Instagram: @dianataylorstudio
Artist name: Barbara Bryn Klare
Title: SHREDDED FLAG (CHARLOTTESVILLE) and THINGS FALL APART
Description: SHREDDED FLAG (CHARLOTTESVILLE)
23 x 28 cm Ink and thread on paper
I created this piece in response to the divisive Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (USA) in 2017. The rally was in response to the removal of confederate monuments after the Charleston church shooting in 2015. Unfortunately, we continue to be in a State of Emergency; we are a frayed and fraying nation.
Instagram: @barbarabrynklare
Artist name: Beth Barlow
Title: Like It. Lump It. We Are All Connected (LILIWAAC)
Description: LILIWAAC was conceived as an effort to crochet the news and work out how seemingly disparate stories shared common threads. On the day it began in earnest Grenfell Tower burnt. Each of the blue circles on the work represent another building, another set of people with new connected fears. Then news on how the money and contracts were at work in this tragedy and the second piece of crocheting was born. "The boil", a piece bulging with things which are hard to discern. This came to represent, law, government, money and cooperate systems. Over the next year with the help of an Arts Council Grant I toured around the Northwest inviting others to crochet their news. Sometimes I met folks on the street and they went away returning with a piece weeks later. Sometimes we crocheted in groups, learning the skills and discussing the issues. Then we worked out how it all fit together. Where did each person’s preferred news story sit most closely to and what strong or tentative strands connected it to the rest. Only one piece of news remained unconnected. A story about how crimes were policed in the home compared to in the street. It seemed most fitting that this piece about isolation stood alone. The crocheting stopped in 2019 after 6 exhibitions, stretching to over 30ft but I wonder what 2020's web would look like. Would it be linked to represent a common endeavour, coming together or would it be more disparate? LILIWAAC was conceived as an effort to crochet the news and work out how seemingly disparate stories shared common threads. On the day it began in earnest Grenfell Tower burnt. The initial tower was followed in the news by days of reports on further places at risk. Each of the blue circles on the work represent another set of people with new connected fears. Then news on how the money and contacts were at work in this tragedy and the second piece of crocheting was born. "The boil" a bulging piece with things within which were hard to discern. This came to represent, law, government, money and cooperate systems. Over the next year with the help of an Arts Council Grant I toured around the Northwest inviting others to crochet their news. Sometimes I met folks on the street and they went away returning with a piece weeks later. Some times we crocheted in groups, learning the skills and discussing the issues. Then we worked out how it all fit together. Where did each persons preferred news story sit most closely to and what strong or tentative strands connected it to the rest. Only one piece of news remained unconnected. A story about how crimes were policed in the home compared to in the street. It seemed most fitting that this piece about isolation stood alone. The crocheting stopped in 2019 after 6 exhibitions but I wonder what 2020's web would look like.
Instagram: @bethbarlow13
Artist name: Lucy Bevin
Title: The Material Body
Description: The work began by exploring ways in which to represent the body inhabiting the home. I was able to observe and photograph a house in North London whose interior rooms contained quantities of fabric, predominantly bedding material. The material covered the floors and furniture in piles and bundles.
I began to arrange and rearrange piles of cloth and old sheets on the studio floor and hang the fabric from hooks, these arrangements began to represent bodily forms which became sculptures.
The Sculptures allude to the body, they are partial bodies. They allude to the body in a way which signifies a connectedness with the viewer, they require the viewer to identify with them. They become half way between body and thing. The use of the fabric breaks down the barrier between viewer and object. There is a desire not just to look at the sculptures from a distance but to be amongst them and to touch them.
Instagram: @lucybevinart
Artist name: Edward Bruce
Title: 'Ringing Banners' [individual pieces are called: 'Grandsire Cinques with Covering Tenor' [left] and 'Bishop David Delight Major' [right] in the photo showing both. In the photo showing the single piece: 'Grandsire Cinques with Covering Tenor'.]
Description: 'Ringing Banners' is a sonic and textile installation incorporating bellringing and weaving. The system of change-ringing is translated into colour blocks, revealing sound patterns. The four banners were woven by Herbert Parkinson Ltd. and shown in Liverpool cathedral, with bells rung by the Liverpool Cathedral Guild of Change Ringers. The weight of fabric was a challenge.
Instagram: @edward.r.bruce
Artist name: Keron Beattie
Title: Deep Fried America
Description: I've been using Tyvek as part of my practice for about 4 years. Recently I've been experimenting with printing onto the material before it is heated and seeing how it behaves . Sometimes the surface burns off completely but this time it began to crisp and bubble, hence deep fried. The map of America serves as the image and makes its own link with the theme deep fried
Instagram: @keron_beattie
Artist name: Lara Buffard
Title: When I wear my mask I'm closer to my soul
Description: I travelled far to find my soul on the edge of a shell; when the light was not anymore a guide, I had to open my arms to find the way. My pearls were reflecting our dance in the shadows of an abandoned building, somewhere, there.
Experimental Dada canopy masks made out with my landlord's bed linen (!) without asking her during the lockdown. I decided to slow down my drawing obsession because I had no more paper but....it turned into an embroidery obsession! And the beginning of a collection of embroidered masks.
Instagram: @lara_buffard_
Artist name: Tara Keegan
Title: Intramural
Description: The human body is ever present in my practice revealing the inside and outside spaces of the body. Creating forms and objects through the medium of soft sculpture enables me to evoke a visceral quality that is inherent in the body; playing with the idea that the work comes alive, a physical representation of my experiences visually and mentally re-creating the world around me. The intention is to create a visual language through corporeal awareness that expresses an embodied experience. Stretching, pulling and prodding the materials in turn stitching, stuffing, squeezing, scrunching, knotting and layering, to create colourful textile mixed medium forms; micro becomes macro, in turn evoking an emotional response.
Instagram: @keegan6402
Artist name: Nicola Turner
Title: Amorous Passions Sombre Lining, 2021
Description: In my work I combine found objects that hold traces of memory, the shapes of living forms, and materials from organic ‘dead’ matter such as horsehair- a material used previously for bedding and furniture and, in that regard, has been soaked with it’s lived history. The pieces are part of a vital and thriving microcosmos comprised of human and non-human agents which functions mostly beyond our conscious contemplation. My depiction of the relation between humans and objects resonates with the notion of abjection and, consequently, carries within it an acute awareness of death. Amid this state of confusion and unsettlement, however, an affirmation of life’s forces is simultaneously allowed to arise.
Instagram: @nicolaturner.art
Artist name: Dagmara Rudkin
Title: Material Damage
Description: There are ongoing links in my work between a female body, nature, animals , mythology, folklore and domestic spaces occupied by women and where stories are told.
'Woman as a Garden'. Installation of deconstructed lampshades, found textiles , raffia, tassels and underwear in response to a mythological landscape. Photography by Wendy Pye.
Instagram: @dagmara.rudkin
