What have I got to do to make it okay?

I have two large scale quilts in the exhibition ‘What Do I Need to Do to Make it OK?’  which opens tomorrow in the Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park, London SW11 4NJ.  http://pumphousegallery.org.uk/visit-us/
 

The show 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 other featured artists are Dorothy Caldwell, Saidhbhín Gibson, Celia Pym, and Freddie Robins. What Do I Need to Do to Make it Ok? is a touring exhibition curated by Liz Cooper, and supported by Arts Council England and the International Textile Research Centre of the University for the Creative Arts.  The show will continue at the Pumphouse Gallery until 1^st November 2015 before a tour to at least five venues across England (and possibly further afield) until the end 2017. There will be a symposium exploring the exhibition's themes on Wednesday 2 March 2016 at UCA Farnham.

I feel very honoured to be showing alongside such esteemed artists.  Liz Cooper selected ‘The Leper’s Skull’ which was shortlisted for Fine Art Quilt Masters at Festival Of Quilts earlier this year and ‘60 beats a minute’ which was the first large scale digitally stitched quilt I made and was featured in Made in the Middle back in 2012 and ‘Things we do in Bed’ at Danson House in 2014. 
There are also two small scale pieces based on the x-rays from the Andersen Archive in BARC at the University of Bradford.
http://www.karinathompsontextiles.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/error-in-bone-installed-part-1.html
 

The exhibition’s other 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.  Celia Pym’s interest in process has led her to knit her way round Japan and to rescue discarded garments. Saidhbhín Gibson’s work focuses on man’s interaction with landscape, showcased in stitch-led interventions with natural objects, such as the “repaired” thrush’s nest titled Comfort and Joy. With deliberate ambiguity in their titles, her work poses the question: is it art that makes things better, or nature?
 

The image above is the Leper’s skull.  I haven’t been able to blog about this piece before as it was a competition entry and the rules are very strict about how much information you can release about a piece before the competition.  For more information about the piece see this blog post.
http://www.karinathompsontextiles.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-lepers-skull.html
If you are in the neighbourhood please pop along and see it. Admission is free, Wednesday - Sunday  11am - 5pm.