Sew Far So Good with Rebecca Devaney, Takashi Iwasaki, Pascal Monteil, Sophie Carr, Leo Chiachio and Daniel Giannone

Stitching as a form of artistic expression, a subversive stitch or embellishment. Listen to a series of presentations on the different forms stitching and sewing can take as we follow the journeys stitching has taken our speakers... 

Rebecca Devaney
Rebecca Devaney is a textile artist, researcher, and facilitator with a BA in Art and Design Education (2006) and an MFA in Textile Art and Artefact (2015) from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. She received the prestigious Thomas Dammann Junior Memorial Trust Award (2015), to research hand embroidery in Mexico and the resulting exhibition, Bordados, a collection of photographs, interviews, and textiles, has been presented internationally.

In 2018, following her graduation from École Lesage, Paris, Rebecca worked as a professional haute couture embroiderer for Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Dior, Valentino, Givenchy, and Louis Vuitton. Her research into the origins, history and heritage of haute couture embroidery was selected for the ICOM Costume conference at Versailles (2020) and published in the Embellishment exhibition catalogue at the Hasselt Museum of Fashion, Belgium. Rebecca established Textile Tours of Paris in 2019 to share her love of the rich heritage of textiles woven through the fabric of Paris.

Takashi Iwasaki
Born in Hokkaido, Japan, Takashi Iwasaki moved to Winnipeg to study fine arts at the University of Manitoba in 2002, where he earned Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Attracted to the Winnipeg's vibrant and supportive arts community, he gained the permanent resident status in Canada and now lives and works in Winnipeg and calls it his new hometown. Iwasaki's art practice diverges into many mediums from embroidery, paintings, collages, to sculptures; inspired by things and events which surround his daily life as sources of his creation.

Most of his recent works are either visual recording of his daily life or visualisation of his imaginary worlds or landscapes that no one would see unless otherwise depicted. Most shapes and colours have meanings and origins that are very significant to him in the way he feels them, therefore they represent and reflect his state of mind.

Pascal Monteil
Pascal Monteil was has been a weaver in Tabriz, ceramist in Kyoto, icon painter in Istanbul and a boatman in Calcutta. After studying fine arts at Villa Arson, France, he travelled to Asia where his work with textiles and stitching began. Following a retrospective "I no longer recognize the sun" at the Château de Tarascon in 2017, he decided to set up his studio in Arles.

On hemp canvas, Pascal Monteil weaves a thread, like a line of gouache, watercolour, glaze, thick oil, charcoal, as he scars the canvas, evoking processions, exiles, frightened architecture, poets on stretchers, descents from artists' beds, boats for prophets and popes failing under the weight of flowers.

We walk in this trembling universe as in the ruins of very old memories; you feel safe there. Pascal Monteil seems to invite Morandi, Giotto, Van Gogh, Paradjanov or Behzad to happy and slow apocalypses. The hemp howls under the tired blows of the never-stopping needle. The clock is the wandering Jew and the painting is the last refuge.

Sophie Carr
Sophie Carr gained a Bachelor of Arts in Textiles & Surface Design from Buckinghamshire New University in 2011. Upon graduating, Sophie won 1st place in the prestigious Hand & Lock Prize for Embroidery and was voted one of the Top Ten Knitwear Graduates of 2011 by WGSN.

Since 2015 Sophie has worked for Hand & Lock, London's oldest embroidery studio with over 250 years of experience in providing bespoke embroidery for the Royal Family, the military and iconic fashion houses. Sophie runs the Hand & Lock annual competition the Prize for Embroidery. The competition highlights the top emerging textile artists and fashion designers from around the world and gives them a vital platform to showcase their talents and gain life-changing exposure. Each year Sophie oversees the whole programme of events including a mentoring programme, the competition judging and curating the annual London exhibition and live grand final to announce the winners.

Chiachio & Giannone
Leo Chiachio and Daniel Giannone. A couple in life and art who have been working in collaboration since 2003. They live and work in Bs. As., Argentina. Embroidery is the technique that we generally use to develop our work. We both decided to transfer our pictorial knowledge to embroidery and to expand the boundary of its configurations. Our intention when we use the techniques reserved in the past for the female gender and in some cases the children's world is to rescue that it is crafts / artisanal art, also to show that two men can enter this world with absolute freedom and in this way erase the boundaries between gender and homework.

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