Wednesday, 19 September to Saturday, 27 October 2007

Michael Brennand-Wood, Nicola Donovan, Rowena Dring, Claire Heathcote, Maggy Rozycki Hiltner, Felieke van der Leest, Bharti Parmar, Annie Whiles

These artists use traditional textile techniques such as embroidery and crocheting to explore the history of textiles and the perception of textiles as a ‘handicraft’ rather than an artform.

At first glance, Rowena Dring’s work looks like landscape painting.  However, the flat areas of colour are actually appliquéd silk, playing with concepts of painting and textiles.  Similarly, Claire Heathcote uses another conventional art subject, the portrait, using a needle to draw loose sketches instead of a pencil or a brush.  Dutch artist, Felieke van der Leest plays with the association of materials with value and the status of fine art in relationship to craft.  In her kitsch jewellery she emulates gold with coloured crocheted wool and beads replace ‘expensive’ jewels or stones.  In his series, Fields of Centres, Michael Brennand-Wood also playfully uses colour and materials.  His sculptural works are influenced by music, philosophy and textile history, particularly Asian textiles and lace.  Maggy Rozycki Hiltner appliqués and embroiders over vintage textiles with images of a past childhood evoking a sense of the histories of the textiles used and the oddity and complexity of life.  For Bharti Parmar it is her research into Victorian samplers and their references to transience of life which has informed her stitched text pieces.  Similarly, Annie Whiles takes another familiar everyday textile, the machine-embroidered badge; playing with their size and motifs, she invites us to take a further look at symbols within them.  The codes within fashion and textiles are a key part of Nicola Donovan’s Princeling, in which she considers the role that textiles has had in demonstrating social status in the past and how this has been transgressed, particularly in celebrity culture.