William Jefferies at Morley Gallery
Given how much I admire the work of weavers Anni Albers, Tadek Beutlich, and Peter Collingwood, it probably comes as no surprise that I loved this retrospective of William Jefferies – A Life in Tapestry at Morley Gallery in London. When I first started attending textile classes as a student at Morley, William’s tapestry class […]
Hawaiʻi at the British Museum
Hawaiʻi: A Kingdom Crossing Oceans is a superb exhibition of feathered cloaks, basketry helmets and fans, and intricately patterned bark cloth. It also traces the links between the kingdoms of Hawaiʻi and Britain, which were so strong that the Hawaiʻi flag incorporates the Union Jack. These links began in the late 18th century, when Kamehameha […]
Peter Collingwood at Margaret Howell
Those of you who have followed me for a while know that I am a great fan of Peter Collingwood. His book The Maker’s Hand (aka Textile and Weaving Structures) is one of my favourite reference books for the way it analyses techniques from around the world, and I admire his engineering ability that can […]
Claudia Alarcón and Silät at the De La Warr Pavilion
Many years ago at a Slow Food event in Italy, before I got into basketry, I bought a bag made in Argentina. What appealed to me was the cleverness of the open-weave structure, the colours (I took it for granted they were natural dyes), and the strong smell of woodsmoke, which persisted for quite a […]
Do Ho Suh: Walk the House at Tate Modern
In this beautiful, thought-provoking exhibition, Korean artist Do Ho Suh explores the concept of home, based on dwellings he has lived in in three cities – Seoul, New York, and London. By physically recreating aspects of these houses and apartments through rubbing and stitching, Suh explores the relationship between architecture, the body, and memory. What […]
Saltaire Arts Trail 2025
I’m very excited to be taking part in the Saltaire Arts Trail over the late May bank holiday weekend on 24-26 May. Saltaire, a village near Bradford in West Yorkshire, is named after Sir Titus Salt. In the mid-1800s he built a textile mill here on the River Aire, along with a village to house […]
Satellites by Dan Coopey at Corvi-Mora
Dan Coopey is a British artist living and working in Minas Gerais, Brazil. To be honest I’d not heard of him until a friend sent me a link to one of his Instagram posts about this exhibition. The Corvi-Mora is fairly local to me but again, I’d never visited. So a double first! Coopey studied […]
Dryad Basketry: A Global Collection
The Dryad Furniture Showroom in Leicester was founded in 1907 by Harry Peach, a businessman who was interested in craft and design. He sold cane and wicker furniture, and during the First World War donated materials for wounded soldiers to make baskets as occupational therapy. This was so successful that he opened a handicrafts section […]
Haegue Yang: Leap Year
The title of Korean artist Haegue Yang’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery is certainly apt, as she leaps between different subjects and materials, from folk art to household objects, from paper collage to clusters of bells. I went for the basketry but stayed for much more. These were my three favourite themes. Basketry There were […]
Come As You Really Are
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself”, according to George Bernard Shaw. But how many selves do we create? How is the self that office colleagues see related to the one out dancing tango on a Saturday night? In the Artangel exhibition Come As You Really Are, housed in a former department […]
