Margo Selby: Woven Rhythms of Colour and Form
British textile artist Margo Selby has built a career at the intersection of art, design, and industry. Celebrated for her mastery of colour and geometric form, Selby’s woven works pulse with rhythm and precision, exploring repetition, transition, and the delicate balance between symmetry and asymmetry. At the heart of her practice lies a fascination with colour — whether through subtle tonal shifts or bold juxtapositions, Selby continually pushes the possibilities of weaving as both a technical discipline and a fine art language.
Margo Selby with rugs. Image credit: Carmel King
Trained at Chelsea College of Arts and the Royal College of Art, Selby has forged an expansive approach to textiles, moving fluidly between hand and machine, craft and technology. Her works draw influence from architecture, graphic design, and pattern, and resonate with the structural clarity of modernist constructivism. In 2021, she was awarded the Turner Medal, recognising her as Britain’s Greatest Colourist — a title that underscores her ability to unite hue, form, and structure with painterly and sculptural effect.
Margo Selby, Breathing Colour (2024)
Selby’s artistic vision often finds monumental scale. Moon Landing, a 16-metre-high woven installation created in collaboration with composer Helen Caddick, was suspended within the vast stairwell of Somerset House during Collect Art Fair. A celebration of the crossovers between weaving and music, mathematics and rhythm, the piece exemplified Selby’s ambition to expand the expressive possibilities of textiles. Similarly, her joyful installation Breathing Colour filled the soaring heights of Blackburn Cathedral with 100 metres of pleated fabric, each tone chosen by textile workers with a personal memory in mind.
Alongside her exhibition work, Selby embraces what she terms an “Art Into Industry” ethos, developing textiles with long-standing artisan partners in India and designing for leading brands such as Habitat. Whether through handwoven rugs, limited-edition fabrics, or large-scale commissions, her practice remains rooted in the loom — its disciplined structure providing both boundaries and freedom for experimentation.
Margo Selby, Vexillum Yarn Winding 3, 2023. Image: Cynthia Corbett Gallery
This autumn, Selby’s work takes centre stage at the British Art Fair, held at London’s Saatchi Gallery. Represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery, she will present pieces from her acclaimed Nexus and Vexillum series. These striking large-scale woven abstractions explore the intersection of textile, technology, and colour, extending her signature investigations into rhythm, order, and the poetic possibilities of thread. The fair, running from 25–28 September 2025, offers a rare opportunity to encounter her work within a curated setting of leading British art.
Margo Selby "Cranbrook" rug (detail).
Selvedge readers also have the chance to bring a piece of Selby’s vibrant world into their own homes. Our Win Win Win competition features Cranbrook, an autumnal hand-tufted rug in wool and tencel designed by Margo Selby. Measuring 180 x 120 cm, its striking composition pays homage to her love of geometric pattern and bold colour. Inspired by the forms of cut glass, Cranbrook features carved motifs in nine rich hues — including coral, magenta, crimson, and teal — woven together in a luminous, layered surface.
As Selby herself says, “My work is rooted in the rhythm of weaving, each thread a building block in an evolving language of colour, pattern and motion.” Through that evolving language, Margo Selby continues to redefine what weaving can be — at once technical and poetic, structural and free.
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Further Information:
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Image Credits:
Lead Image: "Cranbrook” hand-tufted rug by Margo Selby
All other images as credited in photo captions.