Indholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2024 i Embroidery

■ OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS. It’s the start of a new year and with that fresh sweep comes a plethora of prize competitions. Principally, we have teamed up with Brother to run Machine Made: The Brother Creative Machine Embroidery Challenge, which will see two artists win the chance to experiment with a Brother sewing machine over four months, with the results of their industry featured in Embroidery magazine. This represents a wonderful chance to get your hands on the latest tech and push your practice in new directions, while demonstrating there are no limits to machine embroidery. And, did you know that for the price of an Embroiderers’ Guild membership (still only £39) and a £12 artwork handling fee (so your work can be returned) you could see your pieces on show…

Do you remember much about your relationship with textiles and embroidery during your childhood? From a young age, I have always enjoyed craft and anything creative. I enjoyed watching kids’ art shows and following along with the arts and craft projects. In primary school, I used to enjoy textiles crafts, such as weaving and cross-stitch. But my real interest and passion for textiles came from secondary school during textiles class. What training have you completed? I did a GCSE and A-level in textiles, then progressed to a BA (Hons) fashion degree course at the University for the Creative Arts Epsom. Who has been the biggest influence on your textile practice? My secondary school textiles teacher, Sarah Winterton, has been the biggest influence for me. She introduced me to a wide…

■ FRENCH TEXTILE ARTIST Severine Gallardo might on first encounter win the title ‘mad hatter’ but behind each towering, wearable sculpture there is not only a strong narrative but worldwide influences. From Africa’s Yoruba people comes her fascination with the women’s ability to carry heavy items, such as water jugs, on their head. From India she takes the craftsmanship of traditional embroidery that often expresses a relationship to a deity. She references Native American headdresses too, which in ceremonies were thought to link Earth and sky, the seen and the unseen. A deep appreciation of the medieval Apocalypse Tapestry at Chateau d’Angers has been part of her self-education in textiles, while the Quai Branly museum in Paris has fuelled her interest in primitive peoples. There are moments of classicism, the…

HISTORIC, CREATIVE RETREATS IN SOMERSET From 9–14 June, textile artist Janet Haigh, using flowers from the cutting gardens at Court House Farm, will take students on a journey to produce their first observational drawings, which can be used to develop further creative work. A little later in the month, 20–25 June, textile-inspired illustrator Jacqui Mair will guide students through creative collage techniques to develop their unique style and work, which can later be used to develop into textile projects. From 25–30 August, Matthew Harris (1) will help students to explore adventurous and playful ways to gather and manipulate visual imagery, two- and three-dimensionally, in order to develop ideas for textiles. From 2–5 September, Janet Bolton (5) introduces the idea of working directly with fabrics selected by students. This approach allows…

‘I STARTED SEWINGWHEN I was very young. I made soft furnishings for my dolls’ house and clothes and accessories for my favourite bears. I would use any scraps of fabric I could get my hands on and was in love with lace, buttons and trimmings. My grandmother, Betty, was a wonderful seamstress, and recipient of one of my decorated jam jars that she kept OXO cubes in. Her mother made lace as a young girl in Nottingham, a piece of which I still have. Betty was very encouraging and inspiring. She would remove buttons from old clothing and send them to me. If she was shopping in the market and found a pretty piece of fabric or lace she would parcel it up and send it with a note: ‘Make…

‘Can you give a brief synopsis of your Master’s by research? As a lifelong maker and embroiderer, I have always been fascinated by the history of embroidery. When I came across an unusual sampler from a local orphanage it was a fantastic lead into research. A Master’s by research is a little unusual, often called PhD Lite, but it allowed me to plan and research my own project so I was able to decide how I would research the pieces and how I would present my work. I chose to use an approach called material culture that explored how an item, or an artefact, can ‘tell’ us more about the life of the people who made it. I have been able to present my research as an exhibition within the…

■ THE ARTIST STEPHENWRIGHT has created a hermitage in the middle of South East London. A visceral, sometimes anarchic, spectacle that oscillates between outlandish curio and sanctum, Wright’s House of Dreams is an Outsider Art-inspired marvel. The idea for the house originated in 1998, when he and his then partner, the artist Donald Jones, had watched Jarvis Cocker’s BBC Two programme Journeys into the Outside. ‘I didn’t know anything about Outsider Art or environments until I saw this programme,’ says Wright, ‘and I thought, “God, this is amazing.”’ A trip to France followed whereWright visited some of the iconic environments Cocker had highlighted, such as Raymond Isidore’s La Maison Picassiette and Bodan Litnianski’s Le Jardin du Coquillage. Twenty-five years later Wright’s love affair with both France, French Outsider Artists and…

Using industrial, administrative documents, hand-written letters and photographs as narrative conduits, Sharon J Brown tells the stories of ordinary working people’s lives. Her main focus is on the early to mid-20th century manufacturing history of the North of England. Concentrating on Lancashire, with its textile mills and shoe factories, Brown’s fascination is with what she refers to as the ‘hidden’ mainstay of these then mass employers, principally women. In Brown’s hands these documents – sometimes found in skips, sometimes in salerooms or as part of a carefully-catalogued, much-treasured institutional archive – transmogrify into fresco-like fragments charged with the rich lived experience of their originators. ‘It all started in 2015 when I found some original documents on a market stall from a now defunct cotton mill in Rochdale called Messrs Riggs…

‘How did the group start? The group was founded in 1962 by a small body of embroidery teachers who were concerned about the limited professional opportunities available to newly qualified embroiderers at the time. Although trained in contemporary practices, these were hard to find and there was very little written about them. The first meeting was an extraordinary affair with friends inviting other friends and the resulting gathering was drawn from a wide range of backgrounds. They were all frustrated by the lack of opportunities for embroidery to be shown in galleries and the fact that is was belittled as a woman’s hobby. Many well known names were at that first meeting: AudreyWalker (née Tucker), Pat Scrase, Judy Barry and Marie Shawcross. Its hosts – Alison Erridge (née Liley), Jennifer…

■ ONTHE INAUGURAL UN International Day of Care 2023, embroidered dusters that expressed the experiences of unpaid carers were strung across the Senedd building (Welsh Parliament) in Cardiff. Their stitchers were carers who responded to a call by Domestic Dusters, a practice-based research project by artist and academic Vanessa Marr, who uses embroidered dusters to champion the domestic rights of women, together with We Care, a grassroots organisation run by Katy Styles that campaigns for the rights of unpaid carers. Their purpose is to inform Welsh government policy by sharing real life experiences in a manner that is authentic, non-confrontational and compelling. Vanessa (pictured right) and Katy (pictured left) share an interest in the invisible nature of care in a domestic context, inspired by Katy’s experience as an unpaid carer…

■ DID YOU KNOW THERE are about 11,000 species of birds in the world and that they are among the most crucial species to the global ecosystem? According to Birdlife International: ‘Birds play a huge role in preserving our precious ecosystem and as such, all life on this planet. Birds control pests, clean up waste and spread seeds. Around 5% of the plants humans use for food or medicine are pollinated by birds. For millennia, birds have been winging their way across the globe and through our imaginations. They have value culturally, artistically, philosophically and economically.’ The love we have for birds finds many ways of expression, whether that involves a camera, simply keeping your garden feeders topped up, or drawing or embroidering them. A new book by Studio Art…

There’s an elusiveness, an aching intangibility to Nigel Hurlstone’s textiles that makes them shimmer with an unnamed, unspoken sense of loss and longing. Monochrome photographs – made larger than life – are caught on silk organza and disrupted by a dizzying back-and-forth of machine stitch in a weaving of mystery and obfuscation. Standing before them, flickering recollections of turning the heavy pages of old photograph albums or of weekend afternoons spent watching black and white movies on television begin to surface, only to fade away again, impossible to contain. It’s a magician’s trick, a seduction of sorts, with Hurlstone flourishing the wand. For the memories aren’t ours, they’re his. That experience of poring over old family photographs as a child, entranced by their indistinct ghostliness, has stayed with him. ‘I’m…

‘THE DEATH OF MALCOLM LOCHHEAD in March 2023 is a significant loss to textile art; observed with obituaries in The Scotsman and The Guardian, a tribute by fellow Emeritus Professor Pamela Gillies CBE, and a motion proposed to the Scottish Parliament. An outstanding Scottish textile artist, designer and teacher, Malcolm lived most of his life in Glasgow where he broke boundaries from the outset, fighting successfully to be the first male student of embroidery and weaving at Glasgow School of Art (1966–1970). Picking up a teaching qualification as a second string at his mother’s insistence (“something to fall back on”1), by the end of 1975 he had established two important connections that would frame his life: he was a lecturer at Queen’s College Glasgow, which later became Glasgow Caledonian University,…