Indholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2023 i Embroidery

■ Welcome. As winter trudges back into our lives, the Christmas presents have been stowed away, the dog rescued from his bow tie/party hat/reindeer antlers, and the Roses or Quality Street have all but gone, we aim to brighten things up. Which is why we have opted for glorious colour for our front cover, to tell the tale of an ancient art and craft called passementerie (meaning elaborate trimmings), being brought into sharp focus for contemporary interiors by a one-woman weaving sensation with pots of colour inspiration. In stark contrast, we also managed to catch up with Ukrainian textile artist Anastasiia Podervianska, who reports that artists in her country are continuing to voice their opinions through their work, and are busy arranging art fundraisers for their army. Air Alarm Map,…

Ellen Bell, one of Embroidery’s freelance writers, has just embarked on a year-long Arts Council Wales-funded reportage drawing project called Gallery Watching. Hosted by Ruthin Craft Centre and Oriel Davies, Newtown, the project involves Ellen making drawings of the galleries’ visitors as they engage with the art and the art spaces. Culture Colony has been commissioned to make a film of the project and there will be an exhibition of Ellen’s sketchbooks. GALLERYWATCHING.ELLENBELL.CO.UK/…

✪ DAMASQUE WELLS As a child and teenager Damasque Wells’ mother always encouraged her to pursue her creativity, but it wasn’t until her mother’s death in 2014 that Wells built up enough courage to leave her old life behind. Having visited Wales as a tourist on several occasions, Wells felt a connection to the land which evoked memories of growing up on a magical farm in Adelaide. Although Adelaide was a vastly different landscape, she says Wales made her feel a certain ‘sentimentality’ and nostalgia for her childhood. She settled in Swansea – this ‘ugly lovely town… crawling, sprawling… by the side of a long and splendid curving shore’, as Dylan Thomas put it. Although quite a drastic move, it enabled Wells to create a huge shift in her creative…

Textile artist Liz Cooksey is a perfect embodiment of the benefits of Virginia Woolf’s now famous maxim of having ‘a room of one’s own’ in which to work, think and create. For Cooksey her studio, or ‘my room’ as she calls it, is a haven of calm, light and, crucially, a space in which to contain, display and lay out her work. ‘When the boys were younger I used to have to work on the kitchen table,’ she says, ‘and then tea time would come along and everything had to be pushed to one side.’ After two of her three boys left home, leaving one of the front bedrooms in their semi-detached house in South Manchester vacant, Cooksey claimed it. A south-facing, first-floor room, it’s warmed and lit by the…

Creature Comforts is at JGM Gallery in London until 21 January, with work by 14 contemporary textile artists who subvert the expectations of the medium while crafting exquisite work. Here, Karolina Dworska throws the spotlight on a recent Royal College of Art graduate, the award-winning Woo Jin Joo. KD: What initially attracted you to textiles as a medium? WJJ: My interest in art and making began when I was at school. I remember spending a lot of time working in my sketchbook, building ideas around works I wanted to make. Finding the time to research and build ideas is still extremely important in my practice, as well as constant reflection throughout the process. After school, I decided to pursue textile art at Central Saint Martins. On their foundation course I…

On show ABERDEEN Jerwood Art Fund Makers Open until 5 March. Aberdeen Art Gallery, Schoolhill, AB10 1FQ. aberdeencity.gov.uk/AAGM BATH Threads Through Creation: Jacqui Parkinson 7 January-19 March. Bath Abbey, Kingston Buildings BA1 1LT. bathabbey.org BIRKENHEAD Michael Brennand-Wood’s Lace Works: The Encirclement of Space 18 January-18 March. Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Slatey Road, Merseyside CH43 4UE. williamsonartgallery.org BIRMINGHAM Grayson’s Art Club: The Exhibition III (free but booking online is essential) until 16 April. Midland Arts Centre, Cannon Hill Park, B12 9QH. macbirmingham.co.uk BOVEY TRACEY Maker Showcase: Kate Toms (3D sculptural pieces) until 28 January. MAKE Southwest, Riverside Mill, DevonTQ13 9AF. crafts.org.uk BRISTOL Looking to the Light (exploring the history of mental healthcare) until 29 January. Glenside Hospital Museum, The Church, UWE Glenside Campus, Blackberry Hill BS16 1DD. Open Wednesdays 10am-1pm…

■ SISTERS JO AND SUETHOMAS almost think and act as one when it comes to running their business. They set up Made by Swimmer about eight years ago. With its wealth of creature characters offering vintage vibes in bucketloads, and their reuse-recycle-reduce ethic, they have seen their Etsy sales rise rapidly. The rush began, as for so many, with the lockdown boost to business and this year they have operated an order book for their most popular designs. Sales are concentrated in the USA and UK, with the target market the young professional with a penchant for nostalgia, often looking for something pretty for a shelf in the nursery, although the sisters are keen to point out their wares are ‘decorative items’ rather than toys, albeit decorative items that appeal…

Flock Together is a new embroidery project which uses stitch to unite participants in a shared language of making to create a large public participation artwork. Inspired by The Red Dress, showing at ACEarts in Somerton, Somerset, in January, and their ‘no borders, no boundaries’ ethos, ACE has devised this outreach programme for the local and wider community to get involved and become part of a collective flock. Each piece will be mounted on to large fabric panels for an exhibition starting on 14 January. ACEARTS.CO.UK/FLOCK-TOGETHER…

■ It was the giraffe that first caught my attention. Tiny scraps of cloth patchworked along his neck to create the caramel and buttercream-coloured camouflage of picture books. A flower garland around his neck and an African print open neck shirt. Two stubby horns made from cord frayed at the ends. He looks like he’s nonchalantly enjoying a day around the pool. Then were the two little goats: sisters, with jaunty ears, their heads wreathed in summer flowers, wearing exquisite clothing with their faces patchworked too. You want to reach out and take Ella Kearvell’s creations with you, to give them a home. There is something about their patchworked faces that makes you want to care for these creatures, or ‘fabric souls’ as their creator lovingly refers to them. Art…

One day Pippa Haynes was working on a casual basis as a florist when she had an epiphany. The flowers were so beautiful, each one its own perfect world, that she started to think how she could recreate them in three-dimensional stitch, keeping their transient beauty alive. She had seen a couple of examples on Instagram and was living in Islington, London, a borough with a thriving creative culture, when she discovered a local haberdashery shop that was a bijou gem, with all that she needed to start stitching. At the time, she was a jobbing window and editorial set designer, suffering from the last-minute cancellation of jobs, leaving her with little in the kitty. During moments of downtime she started to sew, teaching herself a variety of stitches and…

This Widow’s Work is textile artist Kate Tume’s Instagram strapline. It’s an evocative phrase that stirs up images of a Kåthe Kollwitz-esque woman cloaked in black and stooped over some sewing. And yet Tume is just 42 and is currently in the process of making a vibrant collection of gloriously-embellished masks. Born out of grief over the death of her beloved husband Nicky in June 2021, these are Tume’s death masks. A sorrow that’s still palpably, achingly present, Tume talks of his dying with a sometimes halting voice. ‘He was an endurance athlete, the fittest person ever. He’d done an Iron Man in 2019. He never drank or smoked. There were no symptoms; he just woke up one night with severe liver pain. It was colon cancer and it had…

The embroidery studio at the Royal School of Needlework (RSN) has joined forces with Jay Blades, the face of The Repair Shop on BBC One, to breathe life into two iconic Parker Knoll chairs. Like the RSN, Parker Knoll has been established for more than 150 years. A pre-1920s Art Nouveau design from the RSN’s archive was selected for the backs of the chairs, which features an exotic bird in a fruit tree. In blue, green and terracotta, with a touch of copper and gold, the design was only part-stitched to convey the effect of climate change and deterioration of the environment. On one chair, the brightly coloured tail of the bird was hand-embroidered using vibrant terracotta and couched metal threads; on the other, the quince was the focus with…

■ Aotearoa/New Zealand has a strong history of making in textiles and fashion. Internationally, its most well-known contemporary textiles event is the annual World of Wearable Art spectacular (WOW), but not every artist working with garments makes wearable pieces. Ōtepoti/Dunedin-based maker Victoria McIntosh subverts and celebrates a particular strand of secondhand apparel, transforming discarded women’s underwear into stand-alone sculptural objects with provocative messages. These pieces convey McIntosh’s love of narrative and political passion, manifestations of her strength and her wit as she explores issues of women’s health and body image. McIntosh uses her original training as a jeweller to inform and hone her design and making skills as she intricately repurposes vintage items. Her works are often centred on the body as both site and subject, investigating women’s self-imagery and…

■ INTERESTED IN THE changing nature of class and social equity, I work predominantly with the ‘cosiness’ of textiles. The familiar comfort of fabric draws the viewer in, but I contrast it with uncomfortable realities and ask challenging questions. Using techniques such as tufting, needle punch and knitting, I often employ codes, statistics, graffiti and repetition to explore how information and voices can be suppressed or amplified. As with many textile artists, the roots of my practice date back to childhood. We didn’t have much money so to keep costs down my mum used to knit jumpers for her three children. She taught me how to knit at the age of nine, and from there I was able to develop my own style. While we weren’t poor, things weren’t easy,…

Every year, the National Gallery partners with organisations across the UK to ensure that everyone in Britain can engage with their collection. Partner organisations like public art gallery Oriel Davies in Newtown, Powys, offer new ways for audiences to engage with these paintings. Already making a splash at the gallery is Tobias and the Angel, painted as an altarpiece around 1470-1475 and attributed to the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio. A Deeper Understanding: Responding to Tobias and the Angel sees six artists and one further artist-partnership explore well-being, reflection and contemplation in relation to this masterpiece. Cecile Johnson Soliz is a sculptor using a variety of materials, including fabrics. She connects to the details of the work, such as the sash and the sandal straps: ‘Looking at Tobias and the…