For centuries, the high street has been the spine of towns and villages across Wales: a route lined with shops and services, but also with routines, chance encounters and passing time. In recent years, these spaces have been reshaped by economic pressure and shifting patterns of use. Weighton’s work begins here, but resists literal description. Her stitched and painted textiles do not reproduce specific locations. Instead, they are constructed from fragments — remembered shopfronts, textures of brick and pavement, the rhythm of walking the same streets again and again.
Many of the works are large in scale and densely worked, built up through layers of stitch, print and paint. Known for her textile interpretations of architecture, Weighton extends this language in High Street, allowing surfaces to hold multiple meanings at once. Facades and doorways suggest both permanence and vulnerability; beneath them sit traces of past use, adaptation and uncertainty about what comes next. The work asks how places absorb change, and how memory clings to material surfaces.
We spoke to Hâf Weighton about her inspirations and creative practice, in a Five Minutes with a Friend interview:
Hâf Weighton
Portrait of Hâf Weighton
Hâf, what is your earliest memory of a textile?
My Mum is a retired teacher and my dad was a University lecturer, so we had long Summer holidays. In school holidays we would spend weeks in France. I remember visiting the Bayeux tapestry when I was about 9, and marvelling at the scale of the work. I had always like the idea of creating embroidery on a large scale, and this is something I have achieved in my up and coming show, Stryd Fawr/ High street at Ruthin Craft Centre opening on January24th.
At school I remember being asked to paint and stitch a pepper. I was quite shy and loved doing this, and enjoyed the attention I had from other pupils from the work I was creating...
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Image Credits:
Lead: Pontcanna I (Detail), by Hâf Weighton. Photographer: Dewi Tannatt Lloyd.
All further images credited to the artist, Haf Weighton.
