LONDON CRAFT WEEK: MATERIAL BEINGS
Curated by the contemporary craft studio Forest + Found, Material Beings presents an artist led exhibit, showcasing a selection of makers that use materials to explore conceptually led narratives. Crossing disciplines of textiles, wood, metal and ceramics, artists include Max Bainbridge, Chloé Rosetta Bell, Abigail Booth, Marlène Huissoud, Alida Kuzemczak-Sayer, Francisca Onumah, Frances Pinnock and Marcin Rusak.
The works are united through their expression of the physicality within the making process, engaging with the tactical encounters between their hands and their materials. Through each artists personal narrative they attempt to find meaning, challenge our psychological perceptions and establish deeper connections with life in new ways. Giving respect, value and a voice to their chosen material.
Max Bainbridge and Abigail Booth established the partnership Forest + Found having met during their studies at Chelsea College of Art. Acting as a studio for creating installations that respond to interactions between the natural landscape, Earths materials and the process of craft. Alongside the curation of Material Beings both artists will too be presenting their individual works.
Expressing their thoughts behind the vision of the show, the duo revealed to me...
"We were particularly interested in artists who approach material as if it is language itself. Where the act of making is the very expression of an idea. So, the works in the show are not solely exploring the physicality of material, but actually the psychological space material can occupy. Each artist is questioning, in very unique ways, the relationship between the human and non-human and where that line, if it even exists, begins and ends."
Creating textile art pieces, Abigail Booth draws upon personal interactions with the natural landscape to explore a visual dialogue of dreams and memory. Working with nature as both a landscape of inspiration and a physical material to extract organic colour, collected from plants she discovers through being with the land. The textile works Booth then creates become layered, complex constructions and re imaginations of these landscapes. The intimate language of textiles offers Booth a material to reflect a personal and tactile experience.
Could you explain more about the specific works you will be exhibiting and their inspiration Abigail?
I am working on three new textile works for the show that are exploring a deeply personal domestic space. The references in each work are all connected to the same Victorian terraced house and are the beginning of a much wider body of work that is turning inward and looking at domestic archetypes and the way that, much like textiles themselves, interior spaces and the very fabric of our homes hold memory and previous lives in their bones.
How do your selection of natural pigments and materials been embody this narrative?
These works have all been made from a pigment created from soot from the hearth of a wood burning fire. I am interested in the latent emotive qualities held within pigments, so just the smell of working with soot brings ideas and memories to the surface as I make these works. Particularly in these works I’m interested in the idea of thresholds within the domestic space, these permeable places such as the hearth or windows within the home. The textiles I work with are often reclaimed from domestic contexts, a lot of old bedsheets and curtains get repurposed and pieced into my works, and for me they carry their past lives with them. Even if not immediately evident of the surface of the works, in the making, I’m deeply aware of say a sheet worn so thin by sleeping bodies, or the subtle sun bleaching of curtains repeatedly drawn and closed.
Taking Place in the Lavery Studio of Cromwell Place in South Kensington. Alongside the exhibition will run a series of ‘In Conversation’ events and live performances where makers will demonstrate their processes of creation and engage in deep material discussions.
Hear Abigail Booth speak on her practice, offer thoughts and reflections alongside ceramists Chloe Rosetta Bell, In Conversation: Nature and Place in Ceramics and Textiles, hosted by independent collector and curator Sarah Griffin, on Friday 12 May at 18:00 BST (British Summer Time, London, UK).
Whilst the exhibit is free to visit, booking for In Conversation talks is required. Tickets cost £6 and can be purchased here.
Material Beings will take place in the Lavery Studio of Cromwell Place, open daily between the 10-14 May.
Guest edited by Katerina Knight
Images courtesy of Forest + Found
The works are united through their expression of the physicality within the making process, engaging with the tactical encounters between their hands and their materials. Through each artists personal narrative they attempt to find meaning, challenge our psychological perceptions and establish deeper connections with life in new ways. Giving respect, value and a voice to their chosen material.
Max Bainbridge and Abigail Booth established the partnership Forest + Found having met during their studies at Chelsea College of Art. Acting as a studio for creating installations that respond to interactions between the natural landscape, Earths materials and the process of craft. Alongside the curation of Material Beings both artists will too be presenting their individual works.
Expressing their thoughts behind the vision of the show, the duo revealed to me...
"We were particularly interested in artists who approach material as if it is language itself. Where the act of making is the very expression of an idea. So, the works in the show are not solely exploring the physicality of material, but actually the psychological space material can occupy. Each artist is questioning, in very unique ways, the relationship between the human and non-human and where that line, if it even exists, begins and ends."
Creating textile art pieces, Abigail Booth draws upon personal interactions with the natural landscape to explore a visual dialogue of dreams and memory. Working with nature as both a landscape of inspiration and a physical material to extract organic colour, collected from plants she discovers through being with the land. The textile works Booth then creates become layered, complex constructions and re imaginations of these landscapes. The intimate language of textiles offers Booth a material to reflect a personal and tactile experience.
Could you explain more about the specific works you will be exhibiting and their inspiration Abigail?
I am working on three new textile works for the show that are exploring a deeply personal domestic space. The references in each work are all connected to the same Victorian terraced house and are the beginning of a much wider body of work that is turning inward and looking at domestic archetypes and the way that, much like textiles themselves, interior spaces and the very fabric of our homes hold memory and previous lives in their bones.
How do your selection of natural pigments and materials been embody this narrative?
These works have all been made from a pigment created from soot from the hearth of a wood burning fire. I am interested in the latent emotive qualities held within pigments, so just the smell of working with soot brings ideas and memories to the surface as I make these works. Particularly in these works I’m interested in the idea of thresholds within the domestic space, these permeable places such as the hearth or windows within the home. The textiles I work with are often reclaimed from domestic contexts, a lot of old bedsheets and curtains get repurposed and pieced into my works, and for me they carry their past lives with them. Even if not immediately evident of the surface of the works, in the making, I’m deeply aware of say a sheet worn so thin by sleeping bodies, or the subtle sun bleaching of curtains repeatedly drawn and closed.
Taking Place in the Lavery Studio of Cromwell Place in South Kensington. Alongside the exhibition will run a series of ‘In Conversation’ events and live performances where makers will demonstrate their processes of creation and engage in deep material discussions.
Hear Abigail Booth speak on her practice, offer thoughts and reflections alongside ceramists Chloe Rosetta Bell, In Conversation: Nature and Place in Ceramics and Textiles, hosted by independent collector and curator Sarah Griffin, on Friday 12 May at 18:00 BST (British Summer Time, London, UK).
Whilst the exhibit is free to visit, booking for In Conversation talks is required. Tickets cost £6 and can be purchased here.
Material Beings will take place in the Lavery Studio of Cromwell Place, open daily between the 10-14 May.
Guest edited by Katerina Knight
Images courtesy of Forest + Found