Touring exhibition, opened at Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park, London SW11
27 August – 1 November 2015

I’m so bloody sad, 2007-2015, machine knitted wool, foam, sand, knitting needles, 980 × 400 × 2100 mm

What Do I Need to Do to Make it OK? is an investigation into damage and repair, disease and medicine, and the healing and restoration of landscapes, bodies, minds and objects through stitch and other media.

The exhibition’s five artists have varied approaches to the theme: Dorothy Caldwell’s hand-stitching explores how humans have marked and visualised landscapes from the Arctic to Australia to create maps of land and memory. Whilst Freddie Robins uses precision machine-knitting, combining hand-crafted and found objects to examine preoccupations with crime, illness and fear; Karina Thompson’s high-tech embroideries navigate complex data, from cardiology scans to bones exhumed from a medieval cemetery for lepers. Celia Pym’s interest in process has led her to knit her way round Japan and to rescue discarded garments – and Saidhbhín Gibson’s work focuses on our human interactions with landscape, showcased in stitch-led interventions with natural objects. With deliberate ambiguity in their titles, her work poses the question: is it art that makes things better, or nature?

Curated by Liz Cooper

Make it OK? is a touring exhibition supported by Arts Council England and the International Textile Research Centre of the University for the Creative Arts.
For more information

Photography: Eoin Carey

Touring exhibition curated by Day + Gluckman
The Exchange, Penzance, Cornwall, 22 October 2016 – 7 January 2017
Collyer Bristow Gallery, 4 Bedford Row, London WC1, 2 July – 21 October 2015

Mad Mother, 2015, machine and hand knitted wool, 2300 × 1520 × 20 mm

Bad Mother, 2013, machine knitted wool, machine knitted lurex, expanding foam, knitting needles, glass beads, sequins, dress pins, crystal beads on maple wood shelf, 780 × 160 × 160 mm. Private Collection

Liberties, an exhibition of contemporary art reflecting on 40 years since the Sex Discrimination Act.

Works by over 20 women artists will reflect the changes in art practice within the context of sexual and gender equality since the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) in the UK. Some artists confront issues that galvanised the change in law whilst others carved their own place in a complex and male dominated art world. From the radical movements of the 1960s and 70s, the politics of the 80s, the boom of lad culture in the 1990s to the current fourth wave of feminism, encouraged largely through and because of social media, all of the artists’ question equality and identity in very different ways.

The exhibition presents a snapshot of the evolving conversations that continue to contribute to the mapping of a woman’s place in British society. Body, femininity, sex, motherhood, economic and political status are explored through film, photography, sculpture, performance and painting.

Exhibiting alongside: Guler Ates, Helen Barff, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Jemima Burrill, Helen Chadwick, Sarah Duffy, Rose English, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Alison Gill, Helena Goldwater, Joy Gregory, Margaret Harrison, Alexis Hunter, Frances Kearney, EJ Major, Eleanor Moreton, Hayley Newman, Monica Ross, Jo Spence, Jessica Voorsanger, Alice May Williams and Carey Young.

Liberties is part of A Woman’s Place project curated by Day + Gluckman
awomansplace.org.uk/liberties-london
awomansplace.org.uk/liberties-cornwall

Photography: Stephanie Rushton

Curated by David Littler
Cecil Sharp House – the north London home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) – Camden, London NW1
15 May – 25 September 2014

Collection of Knitted Folk Objects – Pocky, 2014, machine knitted wool, reclaimed knitting needles, 700 × 400 × 120 mm

Collection of Knitted Folk Objects – Cecil, 2014, machine knitted wool, reclaimed knitting needles, wood, 240 × 100 × 1220 mm

Collection of Knitted Folk Objects – Mither, 2014, machine knitted wool, reclaimed wooden walking stick with metal badges, stones, 1050 × 160 × 100 mm. Private Collection

Collection of Knitted Folk Objects – Walkin-Stick, 2014, machine knitted wool, reclaimed bamboo walking stick, rubber ferrule, expanding foam

Collection of Knitted Folk Objects – Old Nanny Witch , 2014, machine knitted wool, reclaimed wooden walking stick, stones, ribbon, kilt pin, 500 × 100 × 980 mm. Private Collection

Yan Tan Tethera – which is a traditional sheep counting system used predominantly in the north of England as well as a way to count stitches in knitting – explores, shares and brings to life some of the songs and dances that have eminated from, and been inspired by, England’s textiles industry. 

Spanning five months, the wider Yan Tan Tethera project, a season of performances, events, workshops and exhibition, takes over Cecil Sharp House and spills into the local Camden area.

Freddie Robins’s finished works are heavily influenced by the old children’s rhyme, “Tell-tale tit”. It is the ultimate playground insult, you have a disabled father who cannot walk, even with a walking stick, and a mother who cannot knit!

“Tell-tale tit, yer mither cannae knit,
Yer father cannae walk wi a walkin-stick.”

Cabinet of Textile Folk Curiosities, 2014
“The Cabinet of Textile Folk Curiosities contain an eclectic and idiosyncratic collection of objects and research relating to songs and dances found in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library here at Cecil Sharp House, the Full English Digital Archives and beyond. The main focus of my research has been around the theme of knitting but has also gone on to encompass the broader subject of textiles, fibre and textile production. My research has also strayed into other areas of personal interest; my home village of Rottingdean in East Sussex, (also home to the famous Copper Family), the much maligned county of Essex where I now live, places that I have visited and to where I have an emotional bond, witches and witchcraft and the sensational murders immortalized in the popular Broadside Ballads. My research, love of wooden soled footwear and desire to spend more time immersed in the activities of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) at Cecil Sharp House has also seen me start clog dancing classes with Camden Clog.”

The other Yan Tan Tethera artists are Shane Waltener, Prick Your Finger (Rachael Matthews), Stewart Easton, Celia Ward, the McGrath Makers’ Group, and artists from the collective sampler-cultureclash – Jason Singh, Hector MacInnes, Anne Martin and Aimee Leonard.

Yan Tan Tethera is curated by David Littler, promoted by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) and supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Yan Tan Tethera on film
Filmed and edited by Roswitha Chesher

Studio photography: Douglas Atfield

textilefolksong.co.uk

Blackwater Polytechnic, Feering, Essex
6 – 7 and 12 – 14 July 2013

Works left to right: Typoretum (Justin Knopp), Emery Whitworth

Works left to right: Freddie Robins, Paula Kane, Ben Coode-Adams

Works left to right: Rosalind Davis, Freddie Robins

Works left to right: Ben Coode-Adams, Freddie Robins
Works on white cabinet: Leigh Cameron, Freddie Robins

Blackwater Polytechnic presents an exhibition of exceptional construction in wood, textiles, ink, paint, metal & concrete made by men and women with their hands.

Happy Days presents the self-sufficiency and mental toughness of a group of artists whose work ploughs its own furrow. These artists are above all true to them- selves. And through commitment to a unique vision make amazing work. They are wildly different but together add up to more than the some of their parts.

All the artists in this exhibition share a sense of quality and joy of materials, some embracing the broken, damaged and fixed, some creating the perfect surface. In defiance of the quick fix they use craftiness and skill to create resonant structures and surfaces.

The artists offer the ‘consolation of the considered detail’ whether on an architectural wall slab or on a jewel encrusted finger of flint. Their work embraces the local, the emotional and handicraft. Building is our art.

Phrase taken from John Pawson, A Visual Inventory, Thames and Hudson, 2012

(Statement by Ben Coode-Adams, taken from www.blackwaterpolytechnic.com)

Exhibiting alongside: Leigh Cameron, Ben Coode-Adams, Rosalind Davis, David Gates – The Rural College of Art, Sara Impey, David Howe, Paula Kane, David Kefford, The Paintbox (Emery Whitworth), Annabel Tilley, Typoretum (Justin Knopp) and Sonia York.

Photography: Douglas Atfield

Out on a Limb

Saatchi Gallery, London
10 – 13 May 2013

I, 2013
machine knitted wool, glass beads, coral, antique earring, polished agate and lace, 130 × 210 × 50 mm. In Government Art Collection.

Limb, 2013
machine and hand knitted wool, crochet wool, expanding foam. glass beads, lace, dress pins, sequins and antique faux pearl necklace, 140 × 200 × 640 mm

i, 2013
machine knitted wool, hand crocheted wool, nails, beads, antique glass jewellery, polished agate on maple wood plaque, 180 × 200 × 50 mm. Private Collection

Bad Mother, 2013
machine knitted wool, machine knitted lurex, expanding foam, knitting needles, glass beads, sequins, dress pins, crystal beads on maple wood shelf, 780 × 160 × 160 mm. In the Private Collection of Rosalind Davis and Justin Hibbs.

Still Breathing, 2013
machine knitted wool, hand embroidered wool, hand crocheted lurex, coppered nails, sequins, beads, antique faux pearl necklaces, antique crystal necklace on maple wood plaque, 820 × 1000 × 80 mm

One Letter Apart, 2013
machine and hand knitted wool, hand crocheted wool, expanding foam, ball of sisal, second-hand hand knitted wool glove, antique glass bead necklace, flints, sequins, glitter, mohair yarn, dress pins on oak base, approx 1700 × 550 × 430 mm

A Perfectly Good Marriage, 2013
machine knitted wool, expanding foam, hawthorn log with horse shoe embedded in it, flints, sequins, dress pins on oak, cherry and spruce wood stand, 360 × 440 × 1640 mm

Hacked, 2013
machine knitted wool, expanding foam, second-hand hand knitted wool glove, mohair yarn, beads, sea bamboo beads, balls of wool on hacked steel and wool IKEA stool (designed by Carmel McElroy and Graeme Findlay), 440 × 360 × 980 mm

Out on a Limb – samples and surpluses, things donated and inherited and found, domestic craft, mass manufacture, exquisite craftsmanship, embellished and encrusted, excess, needless, disembodied, immense violence, fear, loss, death, pain, pins and needles, and wool.

Portrait: Sophie Mutevelian
Installation photography: Ben Coode-Adams
Studio photography: Douglas Atfield

www.artscouncil.org.uk