TextileArts news and re:views

A group of contemporary lace makers is to give an ancient craft a twenty-first century edge with a new exhibition of modern lace.

To mark its 10th anniversary, the 98 Lace Group is bringing together the best of its work to challenge all preconceptions about this often delicate, intricate textile. No longer the preserve of old ladies in bonnets, the pieces exhibited range from wall-hangings to bags and vessels, all demonstrating the surprising possibilities of lace.

The pieces create colour and texture out of a web of different materials. Plastic, paper and raffia, metal, linen thread and wire are worked in different combinations to make a stunning whole, echoing the finest lace of the past while belonging firmly in the present.

The UK-wide fellowship of textile teachers and artists aims to revive and maintain the ancient skill of lace making to prevent it being lost for good. Members are offering a rare opportunity to learn their craft at the De Morgan Centre in a series of workshops for children and adults.

Visit the 98 Lace Group web site at www.98lacegroup.org.uk.

Please Touch!

Textile artists (individuals and groups) are invited to submit a piece of work for Tactile Textiles, an exhibition at The Red House Museum, in Christchurch, Dorset, from 5 July to 25 August 2008.

The exhibition will provide a stimulating and exciting experience, enabling visitors to touch the exhibits. When we are working with textiles, we are constantly handling them, yet in exhibitions the urge to touch is usually restrained by "Please do not touch" signs. This deliberately tactile exhibition will dispense with this barrier and create a display that can be touched, experienced and enjoyed by all, and especially by children and visually impaired people.

There will be various prizes including cash awards from CADArts and an Xpression Embellisher machine from Janome. In addition Workshop on the Web, the online embroidery magazine, have donated a cash prize of £50 and there are embroidery supplies from Coats Crafts UK, Fibrecrafts, Jennifer Gail Threads and Gillsew.

Organised by CADArts, (Christchurch & District Arts), the competition is open to anyone and you can enter by post if you pay the return postage. The event is being supported by the Culture, Learning and Lifestyle Action Group of the Christchurch Community Partnership.

For further details please visit the Tactile Textiles page on the CADArts web site.

This special exhibition will be on show from 8 November 2007 to 9 March 2008 in the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Participating artists are from 12 countries and include Judy Chicago, Elaine Reichek, Tilleke Schwarz, Berend Strik, Andrea Deszo, Mattia Bonetti, Nava Lubelski, Clyde Olliver, Kate Kretz and Benji Whalen. A catalogue is planned.

Into the Woods (detail), Tilleke Schwarz

Cas Holmes

29 September - 25 November 2007 ~ Rochester Art Gallery and Craft Case and Rochester Cathedral

Amber Walls

Cas Holmes' narrative works combine recycled materials with digital photographic techniques and methods adapted from Japanese textiles, textile art and papermaking. Her work is informed by personal experience, places visited, stories of her Romany grandmother and old forgotten textiles.

Exotic images, colours and landscape alien to the English experience surrounded Cas during her recent research trip to India, which was supported by Arts Council England. The new works in this exhibition examine cultural links between the Northern Indian art and decoration and her Romany heritage within a broader cultural context.

She has combined the found materials gathered in India with donated waste silks and fabric from the UK, and reassembled them into large wall hangings and more intimate textile canvases. Richly coloured stitched images reflecting patterns and forms from textiles, buildings, posters and street life form part of the main exhibition, and an installation in the Rochester Cathedral Crypt provides a small, enclosed space for contemplation and reflection.

Rochester Art Gallery and Craft Case
Medway Visitor Information Centre, 1st Floor
95 High Street, Rochester, Kent.
Phone: 01634 843666

Open Mon - Sat 10am - 5pm, Sun 10.30am - 5pm
Admission free

www.medway.gov.uk/arts
www.casholmes.textilearts.net

Exhibition of Contemporary Textile Art

August 4th to 12th 2007 ~ Venue 10, Pittenweem Arts Festival 2007

Edge - Textile Artists Scotland have been invited to exhibit at the Pittenweem Arts Festival 2007.

The Pittenweem Arts Festival is an extremely popular major summer event and is now the highlight of the annual life of this pretty East Neuk village in Fife. The festival, which is in its 24th year, features well over seventy exhibitions, plus musical, theatrical and other events. Come along - it really is an inspiring event!

There will be a wide range of innovative and exciting textile work on display and for sale e.g. framed and unframed artworks, 3D items, bags, hats, scarves, cushions, textile jewellery, etc.

For further information please contact: D. Walker: Chairperson, 01382 776249; P Hann: Exhibitions Convenor, 01382 542749; or J Pitts: Publicity Secretary, 01738 444933.

http://www.edge-textileartists-scotland.com/events/watersedge.html
http://www.pittenweemartsfestival.co.uk/index.html

rare quilts on show at Forge Mill

A unique and fascinating collection of rare British and American vintage quilts are currently on display at Forge Mill Needle Museum, Redditch.

The exhibition includes examples from the 1800s to Victorian times and American quilts from the 1830s to the Civil War period and beyond. It shows many varieties of quilts and quilting techniques and shares some of the unusual stories and histories behind the making of them, including an Edwardian 'convalescent' quilt made by men.

Jo-Anne Gloger, Keeper of Collections at Forge Mill, said:

This exhibition is a real treat for anybody who has an interest in quilts.

The exhibition runs until Sunday, May 27th. For more details, call Forge Mill Needle Museum on (01527) 62509. Museum information and opening times are on the Forge Mill web site

Fen Edge Stitched Textiles (FEST)

embroidery exhibition

at Blickling Hall, National Trust property in North Norfolk
11th April - 22nd April 2007

Blickling Hall is not open on Mondays or Tuesdays.
Further information from the National Trust at Blickling Hall, Norfolk.

About Fen Edge Stitched Textiles

The group was started in September 2002 and they meet six Saturdays a year at Cottenham Village College with their mentor, Pauline Verrinder. Advanced textile artiists go through a selection process to gain entry to the group, with no restrictions on where they live.

FEST has 15 members who are mainly from the east at present. The group aims to raise the profile of textile art by sharing and encouraging the personal development of its members work, and to extend their experience by exhibiting regularly both locally and nationally. Above all they indulge their passion for textiles and share it with others.

FEST has already exhibited at Textiles in Focus, nr. Cambridge and twice at the Fashion & Embroidery Show at Harrogate. In April 2007 the group are exhibiting at Blickling Hall, Norfolk and again at the Warner Archive, Braintree, Essex, in Spring 2008.

A Question of Identity is the new touring exhibition of work by Nolitex (Notts Lincs Textile Artists), a group of 18 artists based in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire who have been exhibiting together for the last 11 years. The exhibition opens in Lincoln on 27th February.

The title reflects the theme members have all worked to over the last two years, each member taking a very different perspective on the subject as they considered what makes them who they are.

The group is diverse in its techniques, encompassing a wide range of skills from felting to printing, free machine and hand embroidery and mixed media to sculpture.

"Creating this exhibition has been an introspective exploration of our passions and journeys through life.

We are very fortunate in that we have just been awarded some lottery funding to allow us to buy a laptop and camera so we may take our work and expertise out into the community and show people how our art is created. It often inspires people to try expressing themselves creatively themselves."

There will be a member of Nolitex present at the Gallery for the whole of the duration of the exhibition to answer questions and allow purchases of cards, portfolio pieces and of course the work itself.

The Gallery is within a stone's throw of the Cathedral at the top of Steep Hill in Lincoln, ideally placed for the Castle and some excellent quirky shopping and excellent coffee and book shops.

Farfield Mill Arts and Heritage Centre, Sedbergh, Cumbria

9 December 2006 - 7 January 2007

Take 15 women who share a love of textiles. Add life-times of different experiences and then ask them to respond to the word "journeys".

The result is a wonderfully thoughtful and diverse selection of art by an experienced group who have been together and exhibiting for the past twelve years.

"Journeys" by Textilia III opens in the Howgill Room at Farfield Mill Arts and Heritage Centre, in Sedbergh, Cumbria on 9 December.

Each artist uses her own style and favourite materials - from felt, to intricate embroidery or paint and stitch - to tell a story of a journey that has profoundly affected her life.

For some this is deeply personal. Joan Newall uses waxed papers, stitch and words to convey her recovery from breast cancer and her adjustment to a future she thought had been snatched from her. Margaret Moorhouse fondly recalls regular childhood walks from her home near Skipton across paths and countryside to her village church. Linda Dewart has just returned from a charity trek along the Great Wall of China which she undertook as a challenge to become fit enough to face being 50! Her work is inspired by both China and facing the changes that age inevitably imposes.

Other artists have responded by recalling their own travels to different cultures and landscapes that have caught their imagination in some way. This has led to felt work based on the underwater life and light in Marmari Bay in Paxos, Greece, by Catherine Slater, and to stitched and embellished images evolved from slate rooftops in France, by Sue Allan.

Alongside the main "Journeys" the group will be selling additional textile work for Christmas gifts, including pictures, books, needlework cases and accessories.

Textilia III currently has 16 members who meet monthly to exchange ideas, work towards exhibitions, and keep up to date with contemporary textile work. Last year it launched a website - www.textilia3.co.uk - to showcase members' work and post information about current and future events.

Farfield Mill opening hours

Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, Ontario

December 6, 2006 - April 2007

Guest Curator: Max Allen, Toronto

A new exhibition opening in December at the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, Ontario, will show historic examples of bark-cloth from the Museum's collection, originating from the Pacific Islands, Africa and Indonesia.

"cloth that grows on trees" is made in places (mostly tropical) where the climate is not suitable for raising sheep or growing cotton. Tapa bark-cloth is not woven, it's not paper and it definitely is not flimsy. It is usually made and decorated collectively, by groups of women who know its production secrets and paint it with stories told in striking narrative symbols.

Textile Museum of Canada

Image: Tapa cloth (detail), Fiji, early 20th century. From the Textile Museum of Canada’s permanent collection. Image credit: Textile Museum of Canada. Used by permission.