The exhibition ran from 11th to 16th March at Espacio Gallery, Bethnal Green Road, London E2.
Eleven artists interpret their chosen subjects taking a unique perspective. From the literal – aerial viewpoints, playing with scale and close-ups – to deeply personal responses.
Artists explore diverse themes including a life changing medical event, the modern world viewed through the lens of Norse mythology, family relationships, and the healing power of nature.
The exhibition is a masterclass in how to combine textiles and mixed media, showcasing an exciting range of techniques such as shibori, sculpture, weaving, bookbinding, paper making, quilting and basketry.
In a group project, Circles, the artists demonstrate the vast range of skills and processes at their fingertips, in a colourful, textural, interconnected window hanging.
You can scroll to individual artists by clicking on their names here: Lara Hailey, Kate Beale, Susie Cottee, Rachel Gillard-Jones, Karina Haake, Kathryn Hollingsworth, Ceridwen Sooke, Annika Strandberg, Gill Swanson, Patti Taylor, Veronica Thornton and Yvonne Watts.
And please, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page.
“I would like to buy Ceridwen’s artwork but I only have one pound…”
Sasha (age nine)
The Gallery Installation
The Darkroom
Lara Hailey, our Guest Artist
Lara Hailey’s practice is informed by either personal experiences or wider issues that are pervasive in patriarchal society. She works mainly with textiles, ceramics, print and installation, to explore themes of love, loss, resilience, trauma and equality. She often incorporates reappropriated text to tell personal stories, uncover collective experiences or deal with political issues.
She uses textiles and more recently ceramics because of their innate connection with the feminine and the domestic. The delicate, fragile materials and subtle colours she uses contradict the unsettling narratives that are often revealed in the work. She is interested in using the cathartic process of repair and the transformation of materials as a metaphor for dealing with trauma and building a resilient life.
The Top Women Hundred was inspired by Peter Davies’ Top 100 series of paintings from the late 90s-early 00s, which were disproportionately dominated by men. Throughout history women have been excluded from equal representation in the arts; Lara wanted to address this imbalance by providing an extensive list of her favourite women artists. Using textiles for the piece was itself an act of resistance, as historically it has been associated with the domestic, labelled as ‘women’s work’ and seen as inferior to painting.
Kate Beale
When burdened by the traumas of our past, and in trying to find peace and safety in the present, it is comforting to bring our perspective in close and focus on the details of our natural surroundings. Kate has long been fascinated by dry stone walls, their nooks and crannies, their complex patterns, and the plants that grow from them. Her work attempts to express the beauty of the minutiae of these tiny worlds, that take us away from our own.
Susie Cottee
This collection stems from Susie’s thoughts about home and family, in particular a family row. Seemingly trivial, but revealing a chasm. The damage too significant to repair but maybe, hopefully, differing perspectives could in time be ignored or integrated. Susie’s work references domesticity, the cosiness of a tea towel or some well used table linen, scraps from worn out clothes, or an old teaspoon. An emphasis on mending and patching, slow, homely hand stitching and the repeated, comforting motif of a house.
Rachel Gillard-Jones
Rachel explores nature as a sanctuary for healing and protection after personal upheaval. Utilizing textiles and unconventional home materials, Rachel crafts abstract forms where stitches are celebrated. The series incorporates foraged found items, symbolizing nature’s role in recovery and shielding. Through this work, Rachel’s perspective highlights the restorative power of nature and the profound impact it has had on her resilience.
Karina Haake
Cloud Cases: each case represents a conceptual journey. The cases vary in size, some more detailed, others less so, reflecting the experiences and memories that remain with us. Travel changes your mind, mood and perspective. Just as the case holds the memory, handmade paper contains the memory of the plant fibre – a kind of palimpsest. This year Karina has been making paper at the wonderful Arratos Paper Studio in Madrid. This handmade paper has been further embellished with cyanotype.
Kathryn Hollingsworth
Kathryn’s work is inspired by research in the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum. She explores the human form from a new perspective, looking for beauty in the collection, with textile samples preserved in jars. A series of rib-like forms have evolved from studies of ‘Mr Jeffs’, the Museum’s famous 18th century skeleton. This man suffered from a rare and terrible disease called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva in which muscle turns to bone. Kathryn uses basketry materials, found objects, buttons, fabric, wire and wax.
Ceridwen Sooke
Ceridwen is interested in the human form and the energy and dynamism of the body in movement. She is also inspired by the flamboyant world of theatrical costume. Ceridwen creates palettes of hand painted papers and fabrics and enjoys using a wide range of media such as metal, wire and knitting to express her perspectives on this subject. Recently Ceridwen has been doing rapid drawings of people in the public domain which translate into textile collages using machine and hand embroidery.
Annika Strandberg
Ragnarök: humanity never seems to learn, always repeating the same patterns of hate, and the destruction of each other and increasingly the degradation of our environment. Annika’s work shows how, from the perspective of history, the old myths still have relevance today. Ragnarök is a series of events in Norse mythology that leads to the end of the world. It involves battles, disasters and the submersion of the world. After Ragnarök, the world rises again fertile and cleansed.
Gill Swanson
Inspired by nature in all its forms, Gill seeks to create artwork reflecting the vibrant colours of plants and flowers. She enjoys working in an intuitive way, randomly putting pieces together then layering them or cutting them up and switching the shapes and forms around. She has been exploring the perspectives of scale, distance and varying textures. Much of Gill’s work includes felt and felting wool and she often creates structures from these materials by using free motion stitching.
Patti Taylor
Patti explores how life perspectives change when faced with a catastrophic event. In her case this was her precious daughter contracting meningitis; she is now faced with short term memory loss and blindness. Patti looks at these events from emotional and scientific viewpoints. She has been particularly inspired by the work of 19th Century neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, whose observational drawings and notes steered Patti towards an empirical approach which she tempered with a sensitive understanding of the psychological trauma experienced.
Veronica Thornton
Veronica interprets the theme of perspectives from the aerial viewpoint, a bird’s eye view or that seen from a plane. She finds inspiration in both old maps and aerial photography. The work here shows how the aerial view changes over time. In Forgotten Gardens we see the same place over a hundred years apart as the countryside is swallowed up by the expanding suburbs of south east London. Grand houses are demolished but fragments of garden remain.
Yvonne Watts
Yvonne’s work is concerned with how nature’s extraordinary complexity can give us a sense of perspective and mental wellbeing. This idea is represented by a child who is immersed in and dwarfed by the layers of tall plants. Yvonne uses watercolour and mixed media to create compositions that are a combination of emotions and memories as well as direct observation. The direct observation came from many visits to the glass houses at Kew Gardens where she recorded the beautiful variety of tropical planting.
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