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The Experimental Weave Lab Launch: April – September 2022

27 March 2022 Events / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / News / Reseach / Workshops
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The Experimental Weave Lab, (TEWL), is the City of London’s first contemporary, innovative, experimental textile weaving season. Curated by Philippa Brock and Elizabeth Ashdown, this six-month season supports an exciting programme of short and long-term weaving residencies, talks, workshops and outreach work culminating in a final exhibition throughout most of September 2022. The season aims to explore the experimental, sustainable and interstitial spaces that weavers work within throughout UK craft, research, art, design and industry. All events will be announced on a monthly basis, from the start of April 2022 on The Experimental Weave Lab website and on instagram @the_experimental_weave_lab

Each resident will be tasked with pushing the boundaries of their practice within their time at the Lab, with the residencies being supported to enable all residents to be able to spend a prolonged period of time researching and developing both new and established approaches to their craft. There are experimental textile workshops being led by Residents of TEWL, Amber Roper and Sarah Ward at The Brady Centre with the ‘A’ Team in April 2022. There will also be a living archive lodged on the website detailing the processes and outcomes at the end of the season.

The Experimental Weave Lab aims to connect with London based events throughout the programme, including London Craft Week, The Crafts Council Make, Make! Craft! Live! and London Design Festival.

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Exhibition | Turn and Return: Deidre Wood

27 March 2022 Artist Profile / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / News / Weave Designer Profile
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Turn and Return: The Arc, Jewry St. Winchester. Hampshire S023 8SB

Dates: 7 March – 3rd April 2022

The following text is supplied by Hampshire Cultural Trust, supplied by Deirdre Wood for The Weave Shed.

Celebrating Deirdre Wood’s solo exhibition, Turn and Return, they spoke to the artist herself to find out more about the fantastic weaving and dying techniques used to make the artwork now at display at City Space, The Arc. They also discovered that the raw materials used to make them are of particular local significance to Winchester.

Deirdre’s wrap reel enables her to measure yarn and make it into hanks of a standard size to later dye it and use it in her hand-loomed architectural textiles.

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Profile: Alice Fox

16 February 2022 Artist Profile / Company Profile / Events / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / News / Reseach / Weave Designer Profile
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Sustainability is at the heart of Alice Fox’s practice. The desire to take an ethical approach has driven a shift from using conventional art and textile materials into exploring found objects, gathered materials and natural processes. Alice gathers the materials that are available to her, testing, sampling and exploring them to find possibilities using her textiles-based skill set and techniques borrowed from soft basketry.

Establishing an allotment garden as a source of materials for her work has provided a space where Alice can experiment, exploring the potential of what grows there, planted and wild, as well as other materials found on the plot. This allowed Alice to really focus on material sourcing and consider self-sufficiency in terms of art materials.

Materials are produced, gathered and processed seasonally and are hard-won: There may only be a small batch of each type of usable material each year. As a result, each bundle of dandelion stems, sweetcorn fibre or hand processed flax is enormously precious by its scarcity and the meaning attached to it through its sourcing and hand-processing. Continue reading →

Exhibition: Ann Sutton | On From Weaving – A Survey

1 December 2021 Exhibitions / General / New weave developments
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The New Art Centre is delighted to announce a major survey of pioneering British textile artist Ann Sutton (born 1935).

The exhibition will feature works from every decade of Sutton’s career, from her early days as a student at the Cardiff College of Art, through the 1960s and 1970s when she worked on both two- and three-dimensional textiles, and on to recent painted works, made after Sutton sold her looms in 2010 – a radical act for someone so feted as a textile artist and yet a move entirely in keeping with Sutton’s uncompromising attitude as an artist.

As Richard Howells, Emeritus Professor of Visual Culture at King’s College London, writes, Ann Sutton ‘has always been moving resolutely upstream, against the flow… but doing so with a heady combination of freedom and restraint.’

This survey exhibition is a response to the recent ‘discovery’ of craft as an art form in its own right (and not simply a subset of a wider field of ‘artistic making’) – something that Sutton has fought for from the outset of her career, preferring always to be described as a ‘maker’ rather than a ‘weaver’.

The exhibition will highlight Sutton’s endless experimentation as she pushes the boundaries of what can be ‘woven’ (plastic, linen, cotton and nylon monofilament) and how the necessary geometry of warp and weft can become the starting point for a wider enquiry into systems, pattern, order, balance and harmony. The show will also demonstrate her experimentation with colour, often in contrast to a more formal poetry of monochrome.

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Exhibition: Lenore Tawney | Alison Jacques

26 October 2021 Artist Profile / Exhibitions / General
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LENORE TAWNEY
Part One: 12 October – 6 November 2021
Part Two: 18 November – 8 January 2022

Alison Jacques is delighted to announce two exhibitions of work by pioneering textile artist Lenore Tawney (b. 1907, Lorain, Ohio; d. 2007, New York). Part one, on view during Frieze London, focuses on Tawney’s early work and material
innovations; part two will feature rarely seen late work and an installation from the iconic ‘Cloud’ series. The exhibitions, Tawney’s first in the UK, follow a landmark survey at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Wisconsin (2019).

In 1957, Tawney lowered her beloved cat Pansy into her Daimler and drove from Chicago to Manhattan. At the age of 50, she was leaving her home of 30 years in the search of ‘a barer life, closer to reality, without all the things that clutter and
fill our lives.’ Tawney may not have earnestly committed herself to her artistic practice until relatively late in life, but this move initiated a total immersion.

‘The truest thing in my life was my work’, she later recalled. ‘I wanted my life to be as true.’

Upon arriving in New York, Tawney settled on Coenties Slip, home to such luminaries as Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin, before moving to the nearby South Street, where she leased three floors of a former sailmaker’s
loft. It was here, free to experiment at unprecedented scale, that a nascent idea crystallised, one that would define Tawney’s work for the coming half decade. ‘The idea of weaving in volume floated up to consciousness this morning’, she wrote in 1958. ‘I awoke nervous and excited all day thinking about it.’

Tawney was born in Lorain, Ohio, in 1907, and raised on the shore of Lake Erie. She spent her formative years as a proofreader for a legal publisher in Chicago, but the imprint of Ohio lingered. Her work – weaving, collage, mail art – is strewn with birds, feathers, stones; she never shook ‘the blue of the water and the sky.’ Finding equal value in Zen Buddhism and such Western thinkers as Erich Neumann and Carl Jung, Tawney lived as a modern-day pantheist, finding within nature an all-encompassing and immanent spirit.

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Identity Launch: ReWeave | Here Design | London Craft Week

6 October 2021 Artist Profile / Company Profile / Events / Exhibitions / General / Lecture / New weave developments / News / Reseach / Weave Designer Profile
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ReWeave: Textile Waste Transformed

ReWeave is a novel approach to exploring how fabric waste can be transformed into design-led woven textiles on an industrial scale to meet the increasing demand for circularity in designing fashion and textiles.

Led by textile designer Kirsty McDougall, ReWeave is a Hastings-based design studio specialising in woven textiles and product, and supported by the BFTT. The project intends to develop a viable business model for a more circular approach to design and fabrication, and to analyse the environmental impact of repurposing fabrics at an industrial scale.

By exploring new models of textile design, ReWeave aspires to serve as a blueprint for ideas about reuse and repurposing for manufacturers and brands, spearheading industry change.

ReWeave will be at the Hoxton Gallery to launch their new identity created by Here and Kirsty will talk about the processes and ideas behind ReWeave and their collaboration.

Event: Sat 9th Oct 2021
Time: 11.30 – 12.30
Venue: Hoxton Gallery, 17 Marlow Workshops, Arnold Circus, Shoreditch. London E2 7JN
What3words: extend.union.motor
Tickets: To book event click here

Instagram:
@re_weave_
@heredesign

With thanks to ReWeave & Here for text and images

Exhibition: Craft by Residency | An immersive showcase for London Craft Week 2021

6 October 2021 Artist Profile / Company Profile / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments
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This London Craft Week (4th-10th October), innovative, pop-up retail solution, Residency, plays home to 14 talented makers who will showcase a plethora of crafts and the processes behind them. Craft by Residency is featuring a vibrant curation from Future Icons, and an exhibition debut from marbling artist and designer, NAT MAKS, the space will be transformed into an interactive and immersive showcase that celebrates the technical skill and technique as much as the finished product.

Marble wallpaper artist, NAT MAKS, founded by Natascha Maksimovic, will be unveiling her new Marble Tapestry. Made using wallpaper offcuts, Maksimovic breathes new life into her designs to create a spectacular wall hanging. Maksimovic will also be showcasing her recently launched Metamorphosis collection, a range of 3D fashion garments formed from marbled paper that pay homage to the ancient craft of Suminagashi.

On the Marble Tapestry, NAT MAKS says: “Taking my responsibility further as a print maker, I have found it impossible to throw away my marbled wallpaper off-cuts. In order to celebrate these pieces and reduce my production waste, I have created these curated Tapestry wall pieces. Each one is unique and celebrates the hidden pieces of my art that would usually have been discarded.”

Following acclaimed showcases at the Burlington Arcade and Oxo Tower Wharf, Future Icons presents the work of 13 of its makers spanning a range of disciplines from ceramics to embroidery, to intricate metal and enamel projects to a range of textile and leather based artworks. Continue reading →

Event: London Craft Week

6 October 2021 Courses / Events / Exhibitions / General / Lecture / New weave developments / News / Workshops
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London Craft Week (LCW) returns for its seventh edition with a curated programme of events across the capital, showcasing exceptional craftsmanship and creativity from emerging and celebrated makers. This represents LCW’s most ambitious, wide-ranging festival to date, featuring over 380 events, more than 450 makers and over 240 partner organisations.

From heritage crafts to immersive experiences to pioneering practices using the latest materials and technology, LCW celebrates the art of making and champions the talent, skill and stories of both independent makers and behind leading luxury brands. With workshops, tours, tastings, pop-up stores and unique exhibitions over seven days, visitors are invited to engage with extraordinary craftsmanship from London and beyond, with 31 countries represented in this year’s programme.

Spanning the fields of art, design, craft, luxury, fashion, food and beauty, the festival will highlight how the pandemic has been a catalyst for creative development and new collaborations, spotlight innovative sustainable practices and showcase unique, collectable pieces that enrich our lives and homes.

London Craft Week runs from 4th-10th Oct 2021
You can find the programme of events by clicking here

With thanks to LCW organisers for text and images

Exhibition | Symposium : Thread

29 September 2021 Artist Profile / Events / Exhibitions / General / News / Symposium
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Thread is the gathering of four artists from different cultures and lived experiences sharing common ground; an overwhelming interest in the very stuff of textile practice, of lives lived in and through the literal and metaphoric language of thread. Their work is shown at the Elysium Gallery and is curated by Angela Maddox , Anne Jordan and Lorna Hamilton-Brown

Each artist recognising the potential of one drawn out, spun out, teased out fibre – in both singular and multiple forms – to perform as storyteller, witness, soothsayer, and to be simultaneously capable of healing and harm.

A thread twisted and plied with others, passed through the eye of a needle, the shed of a loom, the tip of a hook, slipped from twinned needles. The wrapped, pieced, tangled, bound, plied, woven, folded, stretched, torn, printed, hooked, knitted, unravelled, stitched, unpicked, blocked, eased, and dyed. All of this.

The thread of stories and narratives, of myths and constructed truths, of obsession, violence, and celebration. Threads worn at and through the body. All life is to be found in a thread.

Thread is an imperative, an instruction. Its practices of joining, increasing, and attaching are ones of expansion and growth. This Thread, and its gathered together fabric, its tales of objects and making, is a hopeful thing. It marks an emerging and new language of textile practice. Continue reading →

Talks | Journeying: Weavers – Ismini Samanidou & Fadhel Mourali

28 September 2021 Exhibitions / General / Lecture
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The first of a season of Europe House Talks organised by the European Parliament’s office in London featuring leading writers and artists discussing issues of contemporary interest with a European focus.

The discussion will be chaired by Tanya Harrod, who writes on art, craft and design, and touches upon the importance of roots and the possibility of new freedoms acquired when one journeys away. This event anticipates London Craft Week, from 4-10 October 2021 at various venues around London.

The Artists

Fadhel Mourali is a hand weaver and textile artist with roots in Sweden and Tunisia who seeks to re-contextualise the universal values of handicraft in a contemporary context. He recently graduated from Central St Martins.

As a hand weaver, he is intrigued by re-contextualising traditional handicrafts to explore their contemporary meaning.

Coming from a mixed background, with roots in both Sweden and Tunisia, Fadhel is intrigued by identity and finding that certain place of longing in his work. Working in between theory and practice, he explores storytelling through tactility in the hope to reach the core of a subject, to fully understand a medium or narrative.

Fadhel is driven to keep discovering the possibilities of material processes and how to translate them visually to create new meanings and concepts. Through in-depth research studies, he aims to investigate, question and develop these notions through techniques that can express contemporary narratives and functions.

Ismini Samanidou was the first weaver-in-residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Born in Athens, her practice crosses the boundaries of art, craft and design with work developed for exhibitions, industry collaborations and site specific commissions. She works with weaving, drawing and photography.
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