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Weaving Eucalyptus Project: Liz Williamson

Since November 2019, Liz Williamson has invited friends and colleagues in Australia, India and elsewhere to be part of her Weaving Eucalyptus Project, requesting them to colour two metres of silk fabric with locally sourced Eucalyptus leaves.

Liz states “I developed this project in response to an invitation from Dr Kevin Murray to participate inMake the world again: textile works from Australia’ to be shown in Vancouver, Canada in May 2020 as part of their Crafted Vancouver month. The brief called for exhibitors to rethink how they would like the world to be, to develop different strategies for making and how textiles have influenced our world. My proposal involved inviting artists in Australia and India to collaborate with me by colouring cloth with a local eucalyptus which I then wove into panel approximately 17cm wide x 120cm long. The installation titled Cultural Shadows interwove local colour, cultural connections and weaving traditions and represents a community of practice linked by an interest in the natural world, natural materials / processes, and the environment.

This work followed on from recent work which has referenced the rag rug tradition, weaving plant dyed silk fabric in strips as the weft and the Australian ‘making do’ and ‘wagga’ quilt tradition in using readily available, locally sourced colour; unfortunately, not repurposed fabric”

Make the world again: textile works from Australia’ showing in Vancouver was cancelled due to the pandemic but the exhibition was launched online on 21 May 2020 and at the end of 2020 was shown at the Australian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne until early March 2021. The Cultural Shadows installation included eleven panels from the Weaving Eucalypts Project all woven from silks dyed by Australian and Indian artists and although not comprehensive of the range of colours hidden in Eucalyptus leaves, the colours in these panels reflected each place, while the process and the finished work will represent friendship, community, exchange and expertise. All artists and the species used are acknowledged in the exhibition documentation. Click here for more information
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Rescheduled: My Bones Are Woven: Ann Sutton in Words & Film | The British Library

Rescehduled event: Ann Sutton will be talking about her work and the new film about Ann ‘My Bones Are Woven’ will be shown at The British Library on Fri 16th Sept 2022 Time: 19.00 – 20.45.

To attend this free event click here 

 

 

The Experimental Weave Lab Launch: April – September 2022

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

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

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 →

Profile: Michaela Johnston | Circular Willow

Michaela Johnston works and studies between her rural home in West Wales and London. Her approach to woven textiles is very process based, looking at each element of production and exploring the routes that can be taken using sustainable practices and circular materials. She designs for purpose and thoroughly considers how her textiles will fit into society and how it works alongside the values she has developed as a designer throughout her Textile Design BA.

Michaela is excited by the possibilities of designing with the future in mind and while doing so exploring the processes of the past. Her journey now continues onto the Material Futures MA at Central Saint Martins, UAL, where she hopes to explore further with a broader spectrum of design approaches and the integration of science and technology.

Her graduate project, Circular Willow incorporates all the values she has built up through her BA focusing on designing for purpose, using local production methods and materials. Circular Willow began with the waste bark from a local basket weaver during lockdown that she took through a variety of experimental processes to become a useable yarn, able to hold colour from food waste and plants.

From this she designed multifunctional pocket aprons using layered weaving techniques which incorporated her willow yarn to enable craftspeople to be more mobile while working. The pockets are made from bast fibres, linen, hemp and willow yarn, and dyed with onion, iron, nettle, logwood, and turmeric.

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Funded PhD: Royal College of Art Textiles

Woman stripping bark from a nettle plantA Funded PhD with RCA Textiles, enabled by funding from the late Susi Dunsmore’s foundation.

About the project
The aim of this project is to develop innovative new pathways for the textile-led social development work of Susi Dunsmore. Dunsmore’s textile practice-led approach to community development was holistic in its understanding of the place of the nettle plant in the local environment and culture.

The Nepalese Giant Nettle provides one of the longest bast fibres in the world and is traditionally used in weaving and knitting by the women of communities in the mountainous region of East Nepal. Woven, knitted and other constructed textile products provide supplementary income to subsistence farming. Susi Dunsmore worked with these textile makers and introduced new weave and knit structures, fibre blends and product types to improve income generation through textile making.

Dunsmore’s approach to social impact through co-design integrated an understanding and respect for the lives of the female makers. Her work provides a model for social impact projects through textile making. This research project will simultaneously model and extend Dunsmore’s approach addressing urgent and contemporary production concerns.

Text and image: with thanks RCA

Exhibition: Ann Sutton | On From Weaving – A Survey

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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Identity Launch: ReWeave | Here Design | London Craft Week

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

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 →