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Exhibition: The Tangible Project for London Craft Week 2023

2 May 2023 Artist Profile / Company Profile / Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / News / Weave Designer Profile
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The Tangible Project

Venue: gallery@oxo Oxo Tower Wharf, Barge House St, London SE1 9PH
Dates: 10-14 May 2023
Instagram: @the_tangible_project

Three textile artists Amelie Crépy, Jacqueline James and Line Nilsen are creating The Tangible Project with five other very different artists and makers for London Craft Week, 10-14 May 2023.

This exhibition of over 30 new pieces of fine works celebrates the importance of touch through materials and promotes the inherent value of the handmade in art and design. In a world leaning toward digital encounters where so recently society was restricted from physical contact, touch has never mattered more. Hands exploring materials are the lifeblood of artists, a fluid relationship that ignites expression, understanding and a sense of connection.

Amélie Crépy endeavours to use only the purest of materials and as little as possible, often using just one colour. She seeks to replicate synthetic processes and digital techniques with hand-made pigments, inks, dyes and other mediums. Her love for the physicality of woven fabric, combined with her history as a textile print designer, has inspired the development of her current practice and the layered patterns she produces. For The Tangible Project she is focusing specifically on hand made oak gall ink created from crushed up galls found on oak trees which will be transferred onto pure Linen. Her work will be presented as both traditional framed artworks, as well as a large-scale piece hung from the wall. Instagram: @ameliecrepy

Jacqueline James’ current collection for The Tangible Project has been positively influenced by working with artist and textile designer Amélie Crépy during their collaboration to create ‘The Alchemy of Blue’ for Collect Open 2022. She will be combining natural, luxury yarns, including wool, linen, silk and banana fibre, to accomplish interesting surface texture with a sensory tactile quality.

Her latest work will feature custom dyed and handwoven textiles for both the floor and the wall. Several new designs are motivated by her fascination with sacred geometry. Jacqueline is further exploring the use of natural dyes and is excited to share her new colour palette. Instagram @Jacqueline_james_rugs

Line Nilsen who will be showing a range of handwoven artworks – contemporary crafted paintings with strong ties to traditional textile making. Continuing on from past work, she is exploring hand cut floats and textured surfaces in her recent body of work. Building on ikat dye techniques, Line has developed her own way of achieving a softer brush stroke effect in her work. Her pieces are hand dyed and painted in multiple stages to get the desired look. All her weaves are made on a 16-shaft mechanical dobby loom. Line is using her love of craft and materials to connect the viewer to her native Norway.

Instagram: @linenilsentextiles

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Bernat Klein: Design in Colour | Exhibition & Book

4 November 2022 Exhibitions / General / News / Publication / Weave Designer Profile
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A new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland will explore the life and career of one of the 20th century’s leading forces in Modernist design, in the centenary year of his birth. Bernat Klein: Design in Colour celebrates the work of the Serbian-born textile designer Bernat Klein (1922 – 2014) who settled in the Scottish Borders after the Second World War.

Opening dates: 5 November 2022 to 23 April 2023
Admission: Free

The exhibition will examine his creative process and varied career; from supplying innovative couture fabrics to some of Europe’s top fashion houses to his strong influence on architecture and interior design in the UK and Scandinavia.

Opening on 5 November, it marks the centenary of Klein’s birth and is part of a series of cultural events developed by the Bernat Klein Foundation to celebrate the designer in 2022. It will chart his 60-year career as a textile designer, artist, educator, and colour consultant.

National Museums Scotland acquired his archive in 2010. This internationally significant collection of around 4,000 objects ranges from fabrics and garments to design development material.

On display in the exhibition will be highlights from the collection – including couture fashion, interior designs, textiles and original artworks – alongside newly acquired pieces which contextualise Klein’s work and recognise his legacy. Made possible with Art Fund support through the New Collecting Awards, these acquisitions include creations by fellow textile designers Ascher Ltd and Tibor Reich.

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Theo Rooden: Visual Artist

27 October 2022 Artist Profile / Company Profile / General / New weave developments / News / Reseach / Weave Designer Profile
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Visual artist Theo Rooden (The Netherlands, 1969) loves to take advantage of weaving techniques to build his geometric abstract compositions. In many of his works he challenges the flatness of the fabric with optical effects.

With his self-imposed rules he searches for interesting rhythms and patterns. Possibilities and constraints of the loom and yarn are a source of inspiration. Rooden prefers to make series of works to explore in detail the consequences of algorithms and its variants. When translating a design into a woven fabric, the self-imposed rules need to be bent opening a space for unexpected and interesting results. Intuition regarding colours and composition shape final choices.

Being trained as an Industrial Design Engineer, his path led him more and more to being autonomous to create beautiful things, first in graphic design, later as a visual artist. With a lifelong fascination for patterns he started weaving in 2018. As a fast learner he was able to balance his already developed personal style with the principles of weaving. In 2021 he acquired a damask handloom.

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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 →

Profile: Michaela Johnston | Circular Willow

15 February 2022 Artist Profile / General / New weave developments / Reseach / Weave Designer Profile
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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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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

Drawing With Threads: Royal Academy

1 September 2021 General / New weave developments / Weave Designer Profile / Workshops
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Join the Royal Academy for a weekend-long weaving course, to reclaim the magic of making through a simultaneously universal and often-overlooked artform.

Taking inspiration from self-taught artists and visceral art making practices – themes that RA Summer Exhibition Coordinator Yinka Shonibare RA will be exploring in this year’s show – artist and weaver Ismini Samanidou leads a course exploring the physicality of working with threads.

Over the weekend, using a small frame loom and threads from Ismini’s studio materials collection, you’ll choose and adapt images, as well as learning to develop a colour palette. You’ll focus on using colour, proportion and texture to develop ideas for a finished piece of work – an approach that is central to Ismini’s practice.

This workshop is part of the RA Summer Exhibition 2021 programme: Reclaiming Magic. Focusing on celebrating the work of historically marginalised and overlooked practitioners, this workshop will celebrate the artistic processes of traditional makers (very often women and people of colour), whose work is often deeply embedded in their cultural worlds.

Participants can bring their own visual references to work from, or will be able to choose from a selection of works relating to the Summer Exhibition and the RA’s permanent collection. Continue reading →

Holly McQuillan: Weaving Multimorphic Textile-Forms

19 June 2021 Exhibitions / General / New weave developments / Publication / Reseach / Weave Designer Profile
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When Holly McQuillan began her PhD almost 5 years ago, she knew very little about the process of weaving or its potential to transform her research practice, which was primarily form-focused in the context of zero waste fashion design and pattern cutting. However, her experience at the Department of Design in the Swedish School of Textiles provided access to exciting technology and skillful colleagues, and combined with her inherent curiosity to lead to a body of research that operates at the boundary between weave thinking and form thinking, helping to grow the emerging field of textile-form (or 3D) weaving.

Holly came to weaving through her experience consulting with industry and researching zero waste design practices and pattern cutting. Like weaving, zero waste garment design is inherently an ancient practice that values textiles first and foremost. In contrast the fashion industry values speed and cost first. As McQuillan discovered during one of her PhD case studies, the industry would rather waste 4km of virgin textiles (on a single style and size for a season!), than add a single seam. In response, Holly’s research began to explore alternative systems of garment and form creation, coming to focus on textile-form weaving, which, like 3D (seamless and fully fashioned) knitting, enables the simultaneous and on-demand creation of textile and form.

The majority of 3D woven garments have been developed by textile designers, so Holly was interested to explore the potential of applying a zero waste form-making lens to the design of weave-able 3D forms. Beginning with simple t-shirt forms (one shown below), the experiments in McQuillan’s PhD, “Zero Waste Systems Thinking: Multimorphic Textile-forms”, progressively build a foundation of the textile-form thinking skills needed to construct these complex topologies.

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Company Profile: AKHL

27 April 2021 Artist Profile / Awards / Designer of the month / General / New weave developments / Weave Designer Profile
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AKHL was founded by Akhil Nagpal in 2019.

AKHL is defined by its commitment to innovation, experimentation and the crafting of evocative pieces of fashion by contemporising traditional Indian handcrafting and handweaving techniques.

Essential to its designs are distinctive and complex textiles, engineered using unusual and often upcycled materials, employing a wide range of processes including hand weaving, traditional Indian hand embroidery, hand printing, applique and spectrum dyeing.

Ultimately, these signature textiles, in conjunction with handwoven and new age fabrics, are meticulously tailored into inventive and evocative luxury womenswear.

Since its founding, AKHL has been a recipient of various awards and honours. It showcased its debut collection at Lakme Fashion Week SS20 as the winner of the prestigious Gen Next Competition and won The Grazia Young Fashion Award in 2021.

It has also been awarded the curated title ‘Black Sheep’ on Not Just A Label, given to the most innovative and striking designers on the platform.

AKHL has been featured on the ‘Label Alert’ segment in Harper’s Bazaar India and Grazia India as well as in various other editorials by leading Indian fashion publications including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Grazia and Cosmopolitan.

Reflektor SS21 Collection
AKHL SS21 collection has been visually inspired by interactions and distortions of light and colour. The studio has  studied these interactions in highly-engineered and uniquely processed reflective installation artworks by Olafur Eliasson and James Turnell, as well as in softer, yet equally compelling, natural reflective surfaces.

These vivid colour and light visual studies helped them develop new-age handwoven and hand-embroidered textiles as well as sharply-cut sculptural silhouettes, all of them ultimately culminating into an innovative and evocative collection of modern ensembles.

The most dominant textile in this collection has been their handwoven/hand-embroidered silk-raffia mesh. This textile is first meticulously woven on a handloom, it has a raw silk warp and a raffia weft.

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