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Studio Houndstooth launches The Houndstooth Project – a serious play, ludic, egalitarian project, which uses the well-recognised, houndstooth textile motif as the starting point for a public engagement making project for everyone and anyone as either individuals or as collaborators, using any media or approach, actual or virtual. See the website to download instructions and how to participate. Continue reading →
The Open West 2015 is putting out a call for entries. The exhibition will be at The Wilson Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum.
The deadline for applications is 20th February 2015 and the exhibition will be from 16th May to 28th June 2015. You can apply online or by post. All work is invited from UK and international artists aged 18 and over
Curators : Lyn Cluer Coleman and Sarah Goodwin
Guest selectors: Neville Gabie and Alastair Gordon
The open west is inviting submissions from national and international artists and makers practising contemporary and conceptual art inclusive of painting, installation, film and sound, textile, photography, ceramics, print, drawing, performance, sculpture, glass, metal and plastics.
Up to 45 shortlisted artists will be selected and the exhibition will run for a six week period from 16 May to 28 June 2015, at the new purpose built galleries at The Wilson, Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum. There will be an opportunity for selected artists to participate in an educational programme and a day of artist talks at The Wilson.
Ambitious curatorial vision – the open west is an exhibition well worth the trip to Cheltenham. It offers a bold vision by its curators and a fresh and current insight into contemporary art practice. Artlyst, June 2014
The panel of selectors for 2015 will include the curators Lyn Cluer Coleman and Sarah Goodwin, and artists Alastair Gordon and Neville Gabie. The Curators’ Award and the University of Gloucestershire Award will be announced on the Private View night of Friday 15 May 2015.
Full application details can be seen at theopenwest.org.uk along with information and images from the open west’s previous six exhibitions at The Wilson, the National Trust’s Newark Park, Gloucester Cathedral and the University of Gloucestershire.
The open west is a not for profit organisation dedicated to providing opportunities for emerging, mid-career and established artists.
Sarah Goodwin
Lyn Cluer Coleman
info@theopenwest.org.uk
theopenwest.org.uk
Cultural Threads by Jessica Hemmings considers contemporary artists and designers who work at the intersection of cultures and use textiles as their vehicle. Ideas about belonging to multiple cultures, which can result in a sense of connection to everywhere and nowhere, are more pertinent to society today than ever. So too are the layers of history – often overlooked – behind the objects that make up our material world.
The roots of postcolonial theory lie in literature and have, in the past, been communicated through dense academic jargon. Cultural Threads breaks with what can read as impenetrable rhetoric to show the rich visual diversity of craft and art that engages with multiple cultural influences. Many of these objects exist in an in-between world of their own, not wholly embraced by the establishments of art, nor functional objects in the conventional sense of craft.
Cultural Threads is an exploration of contemporary textiles and their relationship with postcolonial culture. However, the postcolonial thinking examined here shares with craft an interest in the lived, rather than the purely theoretical, giving a very human account of the interactions in between craft and culture.
Heather Shields is a woven textile designer based in Glasgow, who has recently been selected on the Crafts Council Hothouse scheme.
This scheme is a “free programme of professional support for craft makers, delivered by the Crafts Council and partners and run over the course of six months” (ref: crafts council website). 39 Makers have been selected for 2015 including previously featured on The Weaveshed, weavers Rita Parniczky and Nadia Anne Ricketts.
Graduating with a BA (Hons) in Textile Design from Glasgow School of Art, Heather went on to pursue an internship with Margo Selby to assist in weaving samples for her book “Contemporary Weaving Patternsâ€.
On returning to Scotland, Heather took up a part time post as weave technician at Glasgow School of Art. A year later she joined Glasgow Clyde College as a weave tutor and began writing the curriculum for their first weave course in partnership with Heriot Watt university.
Alongside her work in education, she developed a new collection of fabrics and was determined to start up her own textile design business. She participated in Nightriders, an 8 week pilot business programme created by service design company, Snook, and began showing her work at local exhibitions. In December 2014 she was selected to join the Craft Council’s Hothouse scheme for emerging makers.
Her designs combine playful colour palettes with bold pattern and quality craftsmanship. A fascination with contrasts, beauty in the unexpected and unusual juxtaposition has always been at the forefront of her design work. She explores these elements through carefully considered yarn choices and specialist construction techniques to create textiles that celebrate the charm of everyday objects. Inspired by childhood puzzles and games, her latest collection of contemporary homeware uses super soft lambswool and a double cloth construction to create luxurious cushions with a strong graphic edge. Heather’s fabrics evoke a sense of fun and are destined to be covetable statement pieces within the home.
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On 14th/15th October 2015, 120 woven textile and textile degree students, tutors and manufacturers from the UK attended a conference in Bradford, fully funded by The Worshipful Company of Weavers, The Clothworkers’ Company, the Campaign for Wool and the WoolMark Company.
The conference was held in response to Course Tutors feed back ,that at times it was difficult to take students on visits to manufacturers to see industrial processes, therefore making the links to what they were studying about manufacturing at university.
Additionally the students are not always getting first hand experience at talking to manufacturers.
The Conference provided the chance for manufacturers to discuss other career opportunities, not just in design for textile graduates but also in manufacturing and quality control. as there is currently a resurgence of employment opportunities in UK textile manufacturing, alongside a skills and talent gap.
All delegates had the opportunity of a visit to manufacturers on the 15th Oct. The participating mills were Abraham Moon, Hainsworth, Pennine Weavers, R Gledhill Ltd and Mallalieus of Delph
Amber Roper is a recent graduate from Central Saint Martins, specialising in hand woven textiles . After graduating, Amber presented her woven textiles collection at the New Designer’s  exhibition held at the Business Design Centre, Islington. Soon after, she was selected as a finalist for the 2014 International Creative Pattern Design Competition, held in Hangzhou, China.
Amber’s degree show collection ‘The Changeover- Modern Samurai’ was recognised for it’s highly innovative and individual use of traditional and experimental materials.
Her collection was placed in the top 3, receiving one of the grand prizes of the competition and winning the award for Best Material Creative.
China Academy of Art and the Hangzhou Municipal Government hosted the competition. It received over 400 entries from around the world and out of these Amber was the only candidate from Great Britain shortlisted to present her collection in China as one of final 30 exhibitors.
She is currently working as a weave designer for menswear shirting company David Howard. She is also working as a freelance textile designer, and has been invited back to china in 2015 by Tao Yin, Dean of Fashion and Textiles at China Academy of Arts. She will be exhibiting a new collection of exciting textiles.
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This collaborative project brings together a woven textile designer, Theresa Georgallis with a digital media studio, Universal Assembly Unit to explore a new visual language between textiles and 3D interactive environments.
Collaborating for the first time for this installation, the designers worked together to create a digital fabric that responds to sound inputs.
These sounds were collected from New Bond street – both above and below the surface and they are high and low frequency sounds that humans cannot hear. They are more like vibrations.
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(im)Permanence.
“It is our perception of space that alters the space.
It is consciousness that finds meaning in all spaces.â€
This Bryan Lawson quote inspired Stephanie Rolph’s research project: (im)Permanence. The project was part of her final year BA (Hons) Textile Design course at CSM, which was an investigation into the potential for creating rigid, self-supporting woven materials. The materials she developed were designed to form a modular furniture system.
Her studio practice focuses on the role of textiles within spaces, both architecturally and as products and objects, looking not just at the appearance of textiles but at the form and physical properties. She aims to challenge preconceived ideas on what woven fabrics can be and how they can be used, believing that unusual applications of fabrics can help to redefine the textiles themselves.
Interior textiles are often generally drapes, rugs and upholstery fabrics. There is general feeling that fabrics within space are decorative: a cushion on a wooden chair or the drapes to accent a room. Often then, the textile is an after thought; some consider them less important because of this. Her project set out to see if she could disturb this relationship, creating woven structures that existed both as ornament and have function within a space.
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The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2014 peace prize to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai, two individuals who have staked their lives on the belief that children, regardless of gender, geography, faith, caste or social circumstance, belong in classrooms. Kailash Satyarthi is the founder of the GoodWeave international rug certification scheme, which works to end child labour in the rug industry and which is active in the UK.
GoodWeave is an international non-profit organisation that aims to stop child labour in the rug industry and to replicate its market-based approach in other sectors. In the UK there are 16 GoodWeave rug designers and importers which are signed up to child-labour-free rugs and the GoodWeave label, including The Rug Company, Matthew Wailes, Jacaranda Carpets, Bazaar Velvet and Deirdre Dyson.
From the cocoa fields of Côte d’Ivoire to the carpet sheds of Uttar Pradesh, there are 168 million children around the world who toil in obscurity. In the announcement from Oslo, Committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said: “Showing great personal courage, Kailash Satyarthi, maintaining Gandhi’s tradition, has headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain.â€
In the 1980s, Kailash Satyarthi began rescuing children from bondage. As chairman of the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude, he fought against child slavery one factory at a time, one child at a time. He conducted rescue raids and liberated children who were enduring extreme violence, some brutally beaten if they ever tried to escape. Following one such raid, Satyarthi personally returned a trafficked boy to his home village. When he went to board a train home, Satyarthi saw dozens and dozens of children destined for the looms in the hands of middlemen. Arrested for causing a disturbance at the station, Satyarthi suddenly realised that this situation required a larger solution. “Something else had to be done. I thought, ‘Consumers have to be educated!’†Satyarthi said in a 2013 interview
This realisation was for him a turning point, and for the child labour movement a profound shift in thinking and strategy. In addition to exposing the ugly truth behind beautiful rugs, Satyarthi set out to establish a certification system that would incentivise manufacturers to stop exploiting children as well as guide consumer purchases. Thus the RugMark label, later to become GoodWeave, was born and the first certified carpets were exported from India in 1995.
Today, GoodWeave works in the top consumer capitals of the world and in the key rug-producing areas across Asia, expanding most recently to Afghanistan. Its programmes in weaving villages near Kabul, Mazar and soon Herat are reaching girls, many of whom resemble Malala. In the two decades since Satyarthi’s jail cell, the organisation has gone on to reduce the number of “rug kids†in the region by two-thirds.
