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 […]
When Forms Come Alive at the Hayward Gallery
“Sixty years of restless sculpture…inspired by movement, flux and organic growth”. Sounds right up my street you say? You bet! I loved this exhibition currently on at the Hayward Gallery. Growth implies movement, which happens quite literally in the first room of the exhibition, as silk-clad lights rise and fall, open and close above your […]
5th World Wicker and Weaving Festival
Last week I attended the 5th World Wicker and Weaving Festival in Poznan, Poland. It was held in the cavernous Poznan Expo Centre over four scorchingly hot days, when the external temperature was above 30C. The main highlight was the live weaving competition, where over 130 competitors from around the world had 15 hours over […]
Warped exhibition by Prism Textiles
The Warped exhibition by Prism Textiles is now in full swing at the Art Pavilion in Mile End, London. At the private view last Wednesday evening Sumi Perera gave the opening speech, dressed in an outfit that most of us instantly coveted! Some of my stitching friends (Carol and Jane) turned up wearing shibori indigo […]
Warped: Prism Textiles exhibition 2023
Where has this year gone? It’s March already and this is my first blog post of the year. I seem to have been busier than usual, as I’ve started teaching basketry evening classes at Morley College (more about this another time) and also I’ve been editing the March issue of the Basketmakers’ Association Journal. That’s […]
Tadek Beutlich at Morley Gallery
I first came across the work of Polish printmaker and weaver Tadek Beutlich (1922-2011) in Ditchling Museum several years ago. Beutlich lived in Ditchling for a while, where he ran a weaving studio. Then in 1974 he moved to Spain, where he ditched the looms and worked just using his hands (“off loom weaving”). The […]
Maria Bartuszová at Tate Modern
Around five years ago I did some experiments with plaster and textiles, experimenting with pouring plaster into balloons or over felt vessels. You can read about it here on my previous blog. It never really went anywhere, but it meant I could definitely relate to the fragile, evocative work by Maria Bartuszová at Tate Modern. […]
