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.

Festival of Quilts 2015

I am very, very excited to have a piece shortlisted for the Fine Art Quilt Masters prize at Festival of Quilts this year.  The prize is one of the biggest competitions in the quilt world in Europe.

I can’t show you the piece as that would invalidate my entry but it is from the ‘Error bred in the bone’ project up at BARC, University of Bradford.  It’s based on an x-ray of a skull from a medieval cemetery attached to a leper’s hospital in Chichester, and the archaeological dig plans of the site.

The image above is also from the ‘Error bred in the bone’ project and is a detail of an archive x-ray from a leper’s hospital in Addis Ababa from the 1980s.  This piece is in the Quilt Art 30^th anniversary exhibition ‘Small Talk’ which is in the gallery section of the Festival of Quilts.  This show of smaller pieces is the companion show to Dialogues which will open at the Quilt Museum in York in September.  You can buy the accompanying catalogue here. http://www.quiltart.eu/quiltartpublicat.html

AND finally I will also be on the Festival panel discussion ‘How does a quilt become a piece of fine art?’ along with Sue Prichard, Keeper of Textiles at the V&A, Dr Sue Marks, Helen Parrott, and my dear Danish friend Charlotte Yde on Friday 7th August, 12.15pm - 1.00pm.  A big subject for a 45 minute discussion!  You can find out more and book tickets here.
http://www.thefestivalofquilts.co.uk/Content/Panel-Discussions/8_42/

So it will be a very busy Festival of Quilts for me.  If you don’t see me on the Fine Art Quilt Masters gallery, or the Quilt Art Small Talk exhibition, or the panel discussion then you’ll find me on the Pfaff stand driving the long arm Powerquilter.  Please come along and say hello!

Error in the bone installed Part 1

Last week I went and installed some of the work that I have made in response to the activities within the Biological Anthropological Research Centre (BARC), University of Bradford, in the workspaces of the Centre itself.  As part of the installation we made ‘interventions’ mixing my contemporary artworks with items from BARC’s collection.  The image above shows some of the digital embroideries based on x-rays in the Andersen Archive in the teaching samples display case in the Keith Manchester Laboratory.   Those of you with an attention to detail will notice the mix of skulls ranging from Neolithic to modern human to apes.

The image below shows one of the Andersen hand embroideries alongside some of the x-rays from the archive on the light box used for teaching.

A big thanks must go to Drs Jo Buckberry, Andy Wilson and of course Keith Manchester for their support and patience on this project.

You can see more example of the Andersen Archive here

http://www.barc.brad.ac.uk/FromCemeterytoClinic/xrays.php