Line Upon Line
Flow gallery is a contemporary craft gallery in Notting Hill, London. Next month, the gallery will open Line Upon Line, a solo show by a leading British basket weaver Mary Butcher.
For this exhibition, Butcher has produced a collection of both sculptural objects and functional baskets, made in response to her handling and selecting harvested materials. She enjoys making large installations for walls or hedges such as her basketry ‘drawings’, but the detail in small objects also preoccupies her mind.
Butcher is a willow specialist who has learned local and traditional basket making from apprenticed makers both in the UK and overseas. This, along side the Art School Fellowship at Manchester Metropolitan University, has given her the freedom to explore creative possibilities, and generated new ways of making. Her techniques and materials now vary from the traditional to the contemporary.
Butcher’s early life as ecologist still influences her ideas. She is fascinated by animal and plant forms and how light can travel through her works. Her practice is said to be an inward process, intense and focused on the final piece, bringing all the strands of her life together.
21 March - 25 May 2019, Flow Gallery, London, UK.