Making New Worlds – Textiles Weaving Art & Life

‘It keeps you looking!’ a visitor to Making New Worlds, Li Yuan-chia & friends, at Kettle’s Yard remarks. She’s gazing at textiles that span the wall (Gallery 2), whose painted markings resonate with repeating patterns that at first appear symmetrical. ‘They are almost disturbing, you expect them to be symmetrical, but they aren’t,’ her friend is also captivated.

These are textiles made by Chinese artist Li Yuan-chia, during his time based in Cumbria, UK, often given away as gifts to friends, with a spirit of goodwill and generosity, who used them as draft excluders. The markings are red, a symbol of life; at their centre, circles full of dots – Li’s signature markings, relating the individual to the cosmos, material to immaterial.


Image: Installation view of ‘Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends’ at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 11 November 2023 – 18 February 2024. Photo: Jo Underhill.

This sense of energy that permeates Kettle’s Yard, is electrifying, with works infused by the spirit of one of the twentieth century’s most influential, but overlooked radical artists, Li Yuan-chia (1929-94). Famous for his ‘radical hospitality’ (Nick Sawyer) and warm spirit, Li once said: ‘I want to put my whole heart into my art and then give my art to everyone – my friends and my enemies’. One of China’s earliest pioneers of abstract art, part of the 1960s avant-garde in London and founder of legendary LYC Museum and Art Gallery (1972-83) in Cumbria that in its time attracted thousands of visitors and became a ‘nodal point’ of creative energy.

The curatorial team behind the show have cleverly drawn on the interplay between LYC’s own values and Jim Ede’s house at Kettle’s Yard. Li shared Ede’s passion for art being interwoven with life and the domestic, but with a more radical approach that meant for Li, there was no hierarchy – textile making was revered as art, cross disciplinary work blurring the boundaries between visitor and ‘activator’ of art. Participatory processes, now finally recognised by the arts sector as a vital to public engagement, were as important to his museum, as art itself. The operational acts of running LYC, became art, too; infused with creativity, community, flapjacks and tea parties.

At the heart of this show is also a story of friendship, between Yi Luan-chia and his collaborators, but also between Li and a woman key not just to the collection at Kettle’s Yard, but to twentieth century British art – Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981). We see her Circular Rug (1970), in the exhibition catalogue (figure 4), as a surface to Li’s assemblage of works. A welcome, made from discarded fabric and a crumbling of boundaries and systems of value, that often elevate art over textiles and over life.

Together, Winfred and Li made ‘the odd couple of British art’ (Sarah Victoria Turner), neither fitting in to traditional narratives at the time – together, making and weaving their own new worlds.

Winifred is best known as a painter, with a powerful sense of reverence for the natural world that fills her paintings and writings with colour and impressionistic energy. She had a strong connection to Cumbria, where she was born and spent much of her life, at Banks Head, even while living in Paris, returning to Cumbria to spend long summers there. But between 1966-1978 she also supervised the designing of over 180 rugs as a revival of the local ‘hookie’ rag rug tradition with her designs, full of flair and colour.


Image: Installation view of ‘Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends’ at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 11 November 2023 – 18 February 2024. Photo: Jo Underhill.

Her son Jake Nicholson wrote, 'Nancy Powell (Liberal Party Agent for Penrith and the Border) ... felt that the Cumbrian country folk had the traditional skills for making rag rugs but had lost their design sense. She thought that Winifred could provide the designs.’ (quoted from an article by Jake Nicholson, 'Winifred and the Cumbrian Rag Rug Tradition, in Artists as Rugmakers, The Boveridge Press, 1994).

Li’s fascination with the circle - from rugs, to discs suspended from the ceiling - as a cosmic centre-point, was rooted in Tao philosophy and Zen Buddhism, as well as counter-culture thinking at the time. Cosmic Point was also the name of his first show in London, in 1967, at the Lisson Gallery. In a poem written by Li in the early 1960s, he writes:

‘The point is the beginning of everything
and also the end.
If you can really understand it
you will feel indeed the great life of the universe
and the value of your existence.’

Near the entrance, weaving the every-day with art and textiles, is Windows, 2023, by Aaron Tan, commissioned by Kettle’s Yard. Together with an 8 mm film by Li, projected onto the installation – its playful details, from receipts, to safety pins, evokes how warmth, collaboration and interdependence make up the fabric of life. An invitation to rethink how narratives in art, how those that don’t fit in can be included; a human challenge to the institution within a museum.

‘To establish a museum is not simply to get everything done in one day; it is not simply a question of how much hard work you put into it. The real question is whether the basic idea is right; whether true love lies behind it’s [sic] values and concepts so that these, like a compass, can show you the right direction.’ Li wrote in text ‘What Can I Say?’


Image: Li Yuan-chia's studio at Boothby, Brampton, Cumbria, 1969. © Demarco Digital Archive University of Dundee & Richard Demarco Archive.

The power of participation can also be seen in Protest Carpet: LYC - MAN DIGGING, 2023, by Grace Ndiritu, also commissioned by Kettle’s Yard. The piece is part of a body of work by Ndiritu, Healing The Museum; tapestries showing scenes from social history, land rights and activism, to gather round – activating ecological change into a new world. Here, the circle echoes indigenous architecture and thinking, encouraging action for future generations. Installed on the foyer ceiling, think less of the despair of film, Don’t Look Up (2021) and more an invitation to ‘look up’ and be part of sacred change.

A reminder that points in time, however small, can be like blessings, powerful turning points that have a ripple effect. What we give our energy to, can activate and give charge; making a whole new world.

Text by Ruthie Collins.

Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends is on at Kettle's Yard until 18 February 2024.

Find out more and plan your visit:
www.kettlesyard.cam.ac.uk/whats-on/making-new-worlds-li-yuan-chia-and-friends