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TO BOLDLY SEW: TEXTILE ART BY ALICE KETTLE

TO BOLDLY SEW: TEXTILE ART BY ALICE KETTLE

July 5, 2023
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Renowned British textile artist Alice Kettle is to stage an expansive exhibition as a collaborative project presented and curated by Brookfield Properties, a leading commercial developer, landlord and a 30-year patron of the arts, and the Crafts Council, the national charity for contemporary craft.

To Boldly Sew: Textile Art by Alice Kettle extends across two of Brookfield Properties’ exhibition spaces in London’s Square Mile at 99 Bishopsgate and 30 Fenchurch Street. Open to the public from 5 July to 29 September, the exhibition brings together a collection of Kettle’s significant and new works, showcasing the breadth of her practice and technical mastery from her over 40-year career.


Image: Alice Kettle's Exhibition 'To Boldly Sew' at Brookfield Properties' 99 Bishopsgate in London. Ⓒ David Parry/PA Media. Image above: Alice Kettle's Exhibition 'To Boldly Sew' at Brookfield Properties' 99 Bishopsgate in London. Ⓒ David Parry/PA Media.

The exhibition follows Kettle’s win of the fourth annual Brookfield Properties Craft Award, a leading contemporary craft prize for UK-based artists awarded at the Crafts Council’s Collect Art Fair each year, in recognition of her significant contribution to the national story of contemporary craft and making. As part of a prize package worth the equivalent of £60,000, the winning artist is the subject of a solo exhibition at Brookfield Properties’ landmark venues in London and has artworks acquired for and accessioned into the Crafts Council Collection – a major public asset which holds over 1,700 objects acquired from the 1970s onwards.


Image: Alice Kettle's Exhibition 'To Boldly Sew' at Brookfield Properties' 99 Bishopsgate in London. Ⓒ David Parry/PA Media.

This year, Saff Williams, Curatorial Director for Brookfield Properties and Annabelle Campbell, Crafts Council, selected Alice Kettle, represented by Candida Stevens Gallery, as the recipient of the 2023 Brookfield Properties Craft Award from over 400 makers, and a shortlist of five international artists. Through this prestigious craft award, her most recent work will become part of the Crafts Council Collection, which also holds a 1988 piece by the artist, with the acquisition of three pieces including Three Girls, 2022; Little Bird, 2022; and The Swimmers, 2023 which form part of the exhibition at 99 Bishopsgate.


Image: Alice Kettle, The Swimmers, 2012, © Candida Stevens Gallery.

Internationally renowned for being a pioneer in her art form, Kettle’s work is deeply rooted in traditional textile practices and incorporates innovative and contemporary techniques, pushing the boundaries of the medium. She uses a uniquely hybrid embroidery technique that involves a sewing machine, free-stitching and digital embroidery, often working on the back of the fabric to use thicker and unconventional threads.


Image: Alice Kettle, Vira in My Garden, 2022, © Candida Stevens Gallery.

A recurrent motif is the use of the figure to present personal and universal themes, featuring real and fictional characters that are navigating a range of situations and events. Kettle's work explores notions of memory, identity, and community, and her pieces often feature intricate, figurative compositions that capture the essence of the human experience, drawing on political events from the personal to the wider, shared experience.

The curation for ‘To Boldly Sew’ will run across two exhibition spaces. The works displayed at 99 Bishopsgate present a collection of Kettle's motifs – the three figures observing their surroundings, the vastness of the sea, and figurative portraits all questioning our relationships with our world and surroundings.


Image: Alice Kettle, Bather, 2023, © Candida Stevens Gallery.

The presentation at 30 Fenchurch Street brings together three bodies of work, each developed in a series and through collaborative projects: Schiffli Series (2006) created with the 86 needle schiffli embroidery machine at Manchester School of Art for the exhibition Mechanical Drawing – The Schiffli Project, in which Alice challenged the uniformity of repeat by changing the colour and thickness of the threads; the monumental Flight Lines created for the 4th Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, China, 2022; and, the recent House That Jack Built series with the artist's narrative continuing across both works.

Kettle’s work is also held in numerous international public collections including the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, the Museo Internationale delle Arti Applicate Oggi in Turin, Italy, Southampton City Art Gallery, Hove Museum and Art Gallery and Hanshan Art Museum, Suzhou China among others. Alongside her artistic practice, Alice Kettle is a professor of Textile Arts at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Find out more:
www.craftscouncil.org.uk/whats-on/to-boldly-sew-alice-kettle
@buttonprcollective
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