art of the STITCH 2003 and Sample30 August 2003 – 12 October 2003 Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead, UK 8 November 2003 – 22 February 2004 Dutch Textile Museum, Tilburg, The Netherlands 13 March 2004 – 30 May 2004 Hall Place, Bexley, Kent, UK The Embroiderers’ Guild in association with Coats Crafts UK presents two major exhibitions: art of the STITCH 2003 and Sample. This is the fifth art of the STITCH from the Embroiderers’ Guild, an open international exhibition selected by a panel of artists and museum curators to celebrate contemporary embroidery. Since its first showing in 1995 art of the STITCH has provided a show case for embroidery as an expressive medium, and gives an insight into the diversity of embroidery production and perception today through the work of artists who use or reference embroidery. 38 works selected from 620 submissions made by 450 artists from around the world will be shown in art of the STITCH 2003. The artists represented in art of the STITCH 2003 are listed at the end of this press release. It has become the tradition to accompany art of the STITCH with an exhibition which provides a historical or wider contemporary context for the work on show. art of the STITCH 2003 is accompanied by Sample. Sample Challenged to question and extend their existing practice, ten contemporary artists have produced provocative new work, to be exhibited for the first time as Sample, opening on Saturday 30 August 2003 at the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead, UK. Sample will confront perceptions of contemporary art and embroidery, each artist having developed their work through the theme of stitch, regardless of the methods of their current practice. For half of the artists involved in Sample, as established fine art practitioners working in formats ranging from performance and installation to abstract painting and digital technology, stitch introduces an entirely new palette of references and methods. Of the five artists in Sample already working with stitch, each has introduced a new dimension to this relationship, rediscovering the history and social significance of embroidery as a subject as well as a method of production. Artists participating in Sample are: Maggie Ayliffe, Michael Brennand-Wood (images follow), Rozanne Hawksley, Abigail Hunt & Kieren Reed (collaboration), Zimeon Jones, Suzanne Langston-Jones, David Mabb (images follow), Joan Schulze, Julian Walker, Jennifer Wright. Sample has been developed by the Embroiderers’ Guild, and independent curator Jo Saunders. A fully illustrated colour catalogue for both exhibitions will be available from the Embroiderers’ Guild. art of the STITCH 2003 and Sample are being exhibited at three venues and which for the first time include an overseas venue. 30 August 2003 – 12 October 2003 Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead, UK 8 November 2003 –22 February 2004 Dutch Textile Museum, Tilburg, The Netherlands 13 March 2004 – 30 May 2004 Hall Place, Bexley, Kent, UK The Embroiderers’ Guild and Goldsmiths College, University of London are planning a conference in spring 2004 to explore the themes, and issues for artists and curators presented by the exhibitions. For images (including those shown here) and further information about art of the STITCH and Sample, or the proposed conference please contact the Embroiderers’ Guild on +44 (0)20 8943 1229 or lszygenda@embroiderersguild.com
art of the STITCH 2003 selectors Janet Ledsham and Joanna Waller will also be exhibiting work by invitation. Synopsis of the Artists exhibiting in Sample Michael Brennand-Wood Renowned textile artist Michael Brennand-Wood has exhibited internationally over the past twenty years work which he describes as striving to achieve a conceptual synthesis of contemporary and historical sources, in particular an exploration of pattern, structure and three dimensional line. Over the past ten years Brennand-Wood’s work has concentrated on exploring patterning as a form of visual language. Brennand-Wood’s proposal for Sample is to take this idea forward, taking the work into an installation format which will chart the transference and absorption of an idea, both conceptually and technically from one piece to another, each work within the installation will influence and exert change upon the one adjacent. Each work will be executed in a different technique to further explore how media exerts its own change upon the core idea, it is intended that these techniques will include holographic and digital virtual realities as well as photography, hand stitch, constructed reliefs and fabric. David Mabb The focus of David Mabb’s current practice as a painter is the juxtaposition of images to raise questions about art and culture. Mabb's recent paintings are worked on mass-produced copies of William Morris original fabrics and wallpapers. David Mabb intends to use Sample as a means to explore embroidery as another rich source of symbolic imagery from which we can understand the ideology of significant artists, positioning works from different eras within the same image. Mabb intends to work with re-workings of Morris embroideries, intervening with their design and symbolism in a similar way to that achieved in his paintings, selecting elements of the design to be singled out and introducing another dimension to the symbolism of the original. Maggie Ayliffe Ayliffe’s current practice in painting explores the ‘visual signification of the feminine’, and preconceptions of painting itself, through abstraction of media images, fashion, fabrics and decorative motifs. Her practice thrives on the play of opposing attributes; the formal and the decorative, the organic and the geometric, the carefully crafted and the intuitive gesture. For Sample Ayliffe aims to incorporate decorative stitch and digitally enhanced photographic images onto canvases to contrast the veneer and luminosity of the photographic surface against the materiality of the stitched and painted surface. Developing from her current practice, Ayliffe will challenge accepted notions of the unique gesture and the repetitive stitch through investigative mark-making, in which the stitch takes on a more individual and gestural character and the painted mark becomes endlessly reproducible. Rozanne Hawksley Established artist Rozanne Hawksley, best known for her issue-based installation work, has pushed what is considered textile art to the boundaries of materials, subject and forms of presentation. Hawksley has lectured at Goldsmiths College, been commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in London, and exhibited widely in the UK and Europe. In participating in Sample, Hawksley has set herself the challenge of exploring the purely utilitarian stitch – stitch for specific needs, using as a starting point her grandmother’s living as a piece worker, hand finishing sailors’ collars for one of the naval tailors in the dockyards’ of Portsmouth after World War I. Abigail Hunt & Kieren Reed The only collaboration between artists in the Sample project, Abigail Hunt & Kieren Reed have previously collaborated and exhibited artwork under the name of ‘Dalton Fox’. In collaborating on work for Sample Hunt and Reed will be exploring the history and socio-political significance of marching banners, particularly the use of decoration, symbolism, formalised aesthetics in both painted and fabric banners to make statements, both political and personal. Hunt and Reed intend from their research of marches and banners to produce their own banners which will utilise the traditional techniques and styles, however theirs will be non political, non religious and ambiguous, reflecting possibly any cause, suggesting different things to different audiences. Once the banner has been completed, Hunt & Reed plan to participate in a real march, seeming to other marchers and observers that their banner is concerned with the agenda of the march, documenting this experience with video and photography to capture peoples reaction to the work, be that if they notice or not. Zimeon Jones The main theme in Jones’ work is an interest in colour and perspective, which he explores initially through drawing, which develops into sculptural textile forms, both of which are works in their own right but also provide Jones with the inspiration for his retail production of scarves. In wishing to expand the influences on his work, Jones experiment will use Sample to introduce light as a new element in his work. This introduction of light will be literal with the use of a projector and will influence not only the technical considerations in producing the work, but also introduce space and audience as integral elements of that work. With the intention of projecting his own drawings onto an installation of his stitched sculpture, Jones will also be working to re-examine the stages of his current practice and create a two-way conversation between these elements of his work. Suzanne Langston-Jones In her current practice, Langston-Jones is concerned with the imagery of dress and dressmaking as recorded in fairy tale, working with light and translucent fabrics and layered or repeated suspended dress forms. Langston-Jones has used embroidered text, machine and hand sewn, applied to the fabric before making up her forms, to further explore her interest in storytelling. The work Langston-Jones is aiming to produce for Sample, will push this use of text to new depths, introducing to her work the historically significant method of cutwork, so that stitch takes over from cloth entirely to make up a garment rather than be the decoration on it. Joan Schulze The internationally renowned artist Joan Schulze is known for her continued innovations in the design and construction of contemporary quilts. Joan Schulze has taken the opportunity to take forward an idea from her very early work, and explores its full potential supported by the knowledge gained over thirty years as a professional quilt artist. Schulze’s existing work is machine stitched, the stitching serving two functions; technically to hold the layers together and as an artistic exploration of the surface and subject, in creating new work for Sample, she intends to make the whole stitch process visible, so that the line of the thread is not lost behind the surface but is discernable as a continuous drawing. Julian Walker Trained at Central St Martins, Julian Walker has exhibited extensively throughout the UK, and has work in the collections of Hastings Museum; Wolverhampton Art Gallery; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and The Natural History Museum. Walker’s work uses text, performance, video, photography, and large installations using thousands of historical artefacts. These collection-based works explore the possibility of a direct physical relationship with a concept, story or experience, and the idea of moving across time, linking with the idea of the relic as being able to control and even abolish time, in connecting us with a concept at its source. Continuing this theme of the historical object connecting us to a foregone experience, Walker proposes to use nineteenth century samplers, unpicking parts of the works and reworking the images and text in them. For this work he is reading the sampler as a declaration of learning a given way of knowing the world at a point in time, the work will unpick the certainties proposed and use the unpicked material to reflect a knowing the world in the present and in contrast with the certainties of the original child maker of the sampler. Jennifer Wright In her current work Wright uses the plastic bead as a unit of mark, attempting to regulate, formalise and reduce the qualities of history, and attempting to create a tension between the superficial association of the bead with the stitch of a traditional needlepoint, which is referenced only in the patterns and regular mark the beads create. For the purpose of this exhibition, Wright will introduce the actual stitch, physically, into her work to explore how the viewer might perceive and negotiate the differences between the identity and authorship of mark invested in both stitched needlepoint and constructed bead panels, in the context of larger digitally printed textiles. These ‘handmade’, ‘physically present’ objects, referencing the stitch and pixel would be developed as interventions and could be perceived as both moments of a pattern’s evolution, or technological breakdown, perhaps engaging the viewer in the question of when authenticity begins and ends and how we want to define it. |