Gathering : Material Evidence

My Material Evidence exhibition in my garden studio is suddenly next week! I’ve just had a delivery of wonderful work by Kathryn Parsons which will go alongside some of my recent work. The exhibition starts on 2nd August and continues until 20th August on a handful of dates only.

My part of the exhibition includes work I’ve made in the last 4 years since my Textile Traces exhibition was shown in 2019. I’m including brand new work that’s not been seen at all, as well as pieces from other projects which have been seen a little but not enough. Hearing how others respond to my work is really important to me. It’s not about getting positive feedback, it’s about understanding how much work connects, inspires or even disgusts other people. How people engage with my work is really important to me and I am really looking forward to sharing things and also meeting people around my work. This connection and community around creative practice, around my work and the people I collaborate with is really vital to me. This time last year I ran a wonderful online programme called Making Meaning Live Gathering which was three days of free-to-access talks and events by amazing creative people. I loved the connections made, the energy it generated and the community I felt part of through bringing people together to talk about what matters to us. In the few weeks that followed the event I felt exhausted, exhilarated and moved to make something that captured some of those experiences. I wanted to stitch something that represented that community, that gathering of creative souls and shared experiences. Not for the first time, I turned to the hexagon patchwork technique which always reminds me of honeycomb, the co-operation and community of bees. I used this metaphor for the Harefield Hospital Centenary Quilt I made in 2015 and thought it might be a good one to revisit. I also thought about the word gathering that I had used for the event and the textile interpretations of this – gathering is one of the chapters in my book Fabric Manipulation and there’s always more I want to explore. So I gathered these ideas together and created a gathered hexagon patchwork. I used small scraps of naturally-dyed silks from my stash, adding another meaningful ingredient to my recipe. Each one is unique and wonderful like the people and stories we shared.

I made and stitched the piece during the hot weeks of July last year, working in my garden, thinking and reflecting on the gathering community that I had created and wanted to capture. It’s a joyful piece for me. I’m not yet sure how I want to present / display this small stitched piece in the exhibition and will be working on that over the next week. I had it photographed a few months ago just as a flat piece but I think it probably needs more movement and dynamism so it will probably look different in the exhibition itself.

If you are able to make a trip to Loughborough to see the exhibition in person I would be delighted to meet you. I will create an online version later in the autumn with photos from the exhibition space too, but please come if you can as I would love to talk to everyone! You can find the (limited) opening hours here and please make sure to message me in advance so I can send you the address.

The events during the exhibition are listed above, and there’s also a Meet the Artist session with Kathryn on 5th August. Details here.

Online version of the workshop will be in September and that’s open for bookings now, if you aren’t able to make it to the in-person one. There’s also a bargain deal including this workshop and an online talk, which you can find here – and all the other things I’ve got available at the moment.

Making Meaning Live Gathering recordings are still available, for free here, or you may prefer the podcast versions which you can find links to on the same page or in podcast apps – search for Making Meaning podcast.