Jilly Edwards: Nature Table

For a year, Jilly Edwards worked from a garden table that wobbled every time she leaned on it. Her house and studio were mid-refurbishment, so this rickety surface became her only fixed point, and everything she gathered nearby went onto it: leaves, flowers, fir cones, twigs, sweet wrappers, bottle tops. The ordinary debris of a life lived outdoors and half indoors at once.

Portrait of Jilly Edwards with 'Nature Table'

That accumulation forms the starting point for Nature Table, Edwards' new exhibition at 8 Holland Street's Bath Gallery, running until 22 August. It brings together 52 handwoven tapestries alongside several larger works, and the scale of the show mirrors the discipline behind it. Each week, Edwards recorded her collected fragments in small handmade sketchbooks, drawing and painting them before her home was ready to receive her back. By the time she moved in, she had a year of studies waiting to become something else, a whole calendar of small observations stacked up like kindling...

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Image Credits:

Lead: Jilly Edwards, Nature Table - Making the Whole Garden Different. Cotton, Wool and Linen Yarns. H13.5 x W13.5 cm (framed dimensions).

All images courtesy of 8 Holland Street Gallery, and as credited in captions.