Woven Gestures - Ptolemy Mann
Until 29 June 2025, Ruthin Craft Centre, Wales, UK
Entering Woven Gestures at Ruthin Craft Centre feels like stepping into a sanctuary of colour - not loud or brash, but precise, meditative, and warm. Ptolemy Mann’s work has long occupied the space between textile and fine art, but here at Ruthin Craft Centre, it achieves a perfect balance: bold yet restrained, technical yet emotional, confident, and careful.
From the moment visitors enter the gallery, they are greeted by woven pieces that radiate with a quiet intensity. Curation of the exhibition enhances this atmosphere beautifully, with its spacious layout and natural light, offering a perfect setting. The work is wall-mounted allowing a sense of structure to each piece giving each work ample room to breathe - not crowded by hanging or competing textures, the viewer can fully engage with the precision of colour and detail in each piece. This sense of space reinforces the meditative quality of Mann’s textiles, and encourages a slower, more immersive way of looking.
Thread Painting, 2025. Photo by Ruth Ward.
In April 2024, Ptolemy Mann travelled to Japan, where she spent time visiting over 50 artisans in their workshops. Immersing herself in the discipline of Japanese craftsmanship, or monozukuri: the art of making things. She absorbed not just techniques, but a whole new way of thinking and seeing: that influence now flows through her latest work.
In response, Mann has continued to evolve her thread painting practice. As ever, she begins by carefully weaving her signature ikat grounds, but now she adds a spontaneous, intuitive gesture of wet acrylic paint, sweeping across the woven surface. This new direction embraces the Japanese idea of Wabi-sabi - the beauty found in imperfection, in the transient, incomplete, and quietly profound things. Rather than depict the Japanese landscape in any literal sense, Mann works from feeling, an emotional, almost unconscious response to the colours, textures, and atmosphere she experienced. Her latest pieces are a deeply personal exploration of Japanese Iro (colour) and Kasuri (ikat), filtered through her own weaving, gesture, and intuitive language.
Kyushu Landscape, 2025. Hand-dyed and woven viscose. Photo by Ruth Ward.
The central piece, Kyushu Landscape, is her largest piece to date at 2.2 x 6.6 m. It draws your eye in as you enter. Made from 11 individual pieces working as one large woven panel, the ikat panel is distinctively the work of Ptolemy Mann, and the scale captures the landscape of Kyushu; vivid pinks dissolve into deep greens, gradients bleed gently into neutrals.
Next, you have six square woven artworks. Mann’s most recent series where she painted spontaneous gestures of wet acrylic paint onto the woven ikat surface. Juxtaposing the two disciplines of weaving and painting, the bold marks capture the gradient seen in the ikat work, but through paint. Some of the brushstrokes have dominated the ikat weaving, whereas in some pieces you can see the woven structures seeping through.
Kimono, 2025. Photo by Ruth Ward.
Mann’s time in Japan has also left a clear mark on the physical form of some of the works in Woven Gestures. A number of the works subtly echo the shape and proportion of the kimono, not as direct replicas, but as quiet tributes to its structure and symbolism. These works feel like distilled impressions of the garments she encountered during her visit: their flowing lines, layered panels, and considered balance of colour. Rather than recreating clothing, she captures its essence.
Through this shift in form, Mann deepens her engagement with Japanese aesthetics. The influence is never literal or decorative; instead, it’s absorbed and reinterpreted through her own visual language. The kimono-inspired works carry a sense of quiet poise, almost like figures in space – still, composed, and contemplative. They reflect her growing interest in how woven textiles can hold not just colour and texture, but posture and gesture.
Paintings including (far-right) Alqa (Cadmium Red Green), 2022. Watercolour and acrylic gouache on Arches paper. Photo by Ruth Ward.
Alongside her woven pieces, Mann’s series of paintings on Arches watercolour paper, which is 100 percent cotton, forms an essential part of her artistic exploration. These paintings are not separate experiments but deeply connected extensions of her textile practice. Where her woven pieces build colour and form through thread and loom, her paintings allow a freer, more immediate engagement with colour and gesture.
What is most striking is how the works are able to hold space, not dominate it, but shape it. Each striking piece commands attention without demanding it. The viewer is drawn in slowly, as if the work itself is setting the pace. There’s no need to rush, the weaving insists on slowness.
Woven Gestures, 2025 (solo show), Ruthin Craft Centre, Denbighshire, UK. Photo by Ruth Ward.
At its heart, Woven Gestures is more than just what you see - it’s about what you feel. The gentle flow of colour, the real, tangible texture of the weaving, and the obvious care in how it’s made all come together to create something that both grounds you and lifts you up. This show sticks with you, not just in your eyes, but in your head. It’s a reminder that beauty doesn’t have to shout to be powerful, and that handmade work still carries an incredible energy.
Woven Gestures, 2025 (solo show), Ruthin Craft Centre, Denbighshire, UK. Photo by Ruth Ward.
As the curator Gregory Parsons summarises perfectly: “We watch going forward how this fascinating combination of methodologies develops and grows. For with Mann in control of dye vat, loom and brush, we are sure to dive further into a world of richness and vibrancy, continuously re-inspired and inspiring.”
Visitors to the exhibition can also purchase Thread Painting. Focusing on the past decade, the book features over 140 full-colour images that showcase the three key phases of her artistic career.
Written by Llio James
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Further Information:
Woven Gestures is on now until 29 June 2025 at the Ruthin Craft Centre, Wales, UK
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Image Credits:
LEAD: Woven Gestures, Ptolemy Mann, 2025.
All other images as credited in captions.