Thirteen Textile Group - Connections

Thirteen Textile Group Exhibition

Connections
WAC, 14 Baylis Road, London SE1 7AA (just along from Waterloo)

Monday 3rd - Saturday 8th October 2016

Open daily 11.00 -18.00

Quite a buzz at the PV last night. I went along early to get some panoramic views -

"Cathy's Cutlery" series by Lynne Acred, and work by Moe Casey near the door

Work by Marilyn Williams, Sue McKay, Rose Chapman, Ashokashri

Work by Pam Smyth and Lynne Acred

Upstairs is work by Rose Chapman and Sue McKay

Click on the links to see their work in close-up. Lighting conditions were tricky and my photos are ... "of variable quality" ...

The cozy corner under the stairs

Lynne Acred's transfer dye paintings include homages to her favourite artists

Four of Pam Smyth's five panels showing the migration of the arctic tern

Rusting and stitching on a celtic theme by Moe Casey

Sue McKay started these panels by printing on linen

Part of a larger series by Marie-Claire Mawle inspired by the fragility of flowers

Sally Eland - the power and chaos of mutation

Hebridean landscape by Ashokashri

Strolling ... up two hills in the west

A lovely day for a walk. This one was part of Walk London, an offering of guided walks by Transport For London ... the idea being that people use public transport to get to and from the walks.

Leafy suburbs

 The lift at Greenford (Central line), starting point of the walk, is a sort of cable car -

 We set off down a meandering path, shared with bicycles -

...and along a stretch of the Grand Union Canal -

White beaks=coots, red beaks=moorh

 The name of this narrowboat brought back a twang or two of remorse mixed with nostalgia -

 ... whereas this strange boat seemed part locomotive, part submarine ... and all wrong -

 We filed along to Horsenden Farm -

... and up Horsenden Hill -

Note the Capital Ring signpost - we were walking part of  Section 9
- only 70-some miles to go to complete the ring!

View to the west, with Windsor Castle somewhere near the horizon 

View to the northeast - that's the next hill we'll be climbing

 Here's one of the things I love about England -

Deciduous forests with very little undergrowth

 ... and this is another - the way the name of the street can suddenly change -

London Road becomes Sudbury Hill

 Reaching Harrow on the Hill, we found a small market on the green. Most of the houses in the village, our guide said, are part of or connected with the school. The gabled building at the rear was once a pub called The King's Head, and when it changed use its sign and gantry was erected on the green -

 A gilded Victorian postbox -

 At the top of the hill is St May's Church, the highest building in Middlesex. It dates back to 1087, but little of the original building remains.

Victorian stained glass

The poet Byron was a pupil at Harrow School from 1801 to 1805 - he would sit in the churchyard and see this view -

 "...he sat dreaming by "his favourite tombstone" (the "Peachy Tomb"), as recorded in "Lines Written beneath an Elm in the Churchyard of Harrow", which is reproduced on a memorial in front of the Peachy Tomb, erected by the son of one of Byron's school friends in 1905. The Elm burnt down sometime prior to 1935. Byron's daughter, Allegra Byron (by Clair Clairmont), is buried in an unmarked grave outside, very near to the south porch."

 Down the hill, past this sculpture in the park -

... and heading home from Harrow on the Hill station (Metropolitan line).

Drawing with stitch

On the way to the Big Draw event at Jerwood Space I filled the travel time with something I've rather lost track of -

Travel lines

Lovely materials for people to use -

Richard McVetis provided instruction and inspiration -

When you can't decide where to start, "take the nearest" - so I found myself with perforated card and string. Fortunately there was a needle with a big enough eye, but getting the string through the card wasn't easy.

What looks like random stitching is actually subject to rules about how many holes and what direction next: on the left, variants on 2-2-2-1; on the right, 1-1-1-2 -

An intriguing box of goodies -

from which I took the "pattern winding" (so like the patterns on egyptian mummies!). How could it be done in stitch?

front

 After a bit of practice, it found a rhythm.

back

 The fabric is a dense wool, the thread a wool mix.

My neighbour took an enviably free-form approach, using some springy linen thread on felt -

 When her square was completely stitched, it looked wonderfully map-like.

I couldn't resist using some lovely perle thread and trying the stranded "mouliné" thread - stiffish, shiny, unravels and (used in 6 strands) knots itself like billy-oh. Also got a snippet of the linen to continue the stitching on the way back home.

But I didn't have a needle with me ... and this the state of the sample at time of writing -

The yellow may have been rayon - hard to stitch into the dense wool, and untwists itself with each stitch. But a glorious colour (especially with grey) and good for couching.

Along the street, this bit of street-stitching has been getting grimier over the years -

Jerwood Space closes at 3 on Saturdays, so I didn't get a chance to see all of the Drawing Prize exhibition again. The pieces nearby looked like they could be, or contain, or be converted to, stitch marks -

Charcoal on paper by Thomas Treherne

Closeup of a stitched piece - couldn't find the label with the name of the artist

The prize winner - a mesmerising video of white ink in gelatine, by Solweig Settemsdahl

Glimpses of Jerwood Drawing Prize

What, nowadays, constitutes "drawing"? Anything and everything, it seems. Last year's winner was a sound piece. This year, I'm not sure, two weeks after visiting the show, what the winner was. 

Nor did I take notes of names. I'll be going back for a closer look.