Beware of Embroidery

The Beware of Embroidery exhibition opened at the Pitshanger Manor Museum, Ealing, on 15 January and runs until 27 February. A five-minute walk from Ealing Broadway station brings you to the museum, which ajoins a historic house (formerly Sir John Soane's country residence, as it happens) -with its adjoining gallery. When exhibitions open, there is an artists' talk, and it's generally well attended - about 60 people were crowding round to hear Tamara Stone (corset books and bed books), Kate Keara Pelen (see below), and Louise Riley (figures on mattresses) talk about their work. Tilleke Schwarz will be talking at the Friday Late on 12 February, and the other artist is Laura Splan.I was particularly glad to see Kate Keara Pelen's work again, after seeing it in the Slade MA show in June, and to hear her talk about how it's rooted in her Catholic upbringing. The objects are derived from the aesthetics of sacred spaces and can (says the gallery's interpretation sheet) "be seen as imagined props for a parallel, fictional set of behaviours and uses,sometimes with an implied relationship to a given institution or site." She said they were distillations from overworked images, taken to "the right stage of completeness".

She uses stitch in intuitive, organic ways rather like abstract painting and presents the embroidery not only as embellished surface but as a 3D object - "a humble, quiet, underestimated medium becomes a tool for surprising and provoking the viewer" - and the tiny actions make you get close to the work.

Laura Splan's "doilies" are actually viruses, translated into stitch via computer digitisation. This "handkerchief" takes things a step further - it's stitched onto face peels - plasticated residue incorporating dead cells. Ah yes, embroidery can be challenging and provocative!