Craft Culture
When Rozsika Parker wrote The Subversive Stitch (1984) she brought to the fore a powerful exploration of the cultural and socio-economic values of embroidery, which revealed the deep-rooted gender politics that led to the devaluation of ‘feminine’-coded arts. Parker’s groundbreaking study continues to inspire and inform new critiques of embroidery and needlework’s powerful yet ambivalent […]
Tussar, Chanderi, Kanjeevaram, Bandini, Patola – these are names I would often hear around me while growing up in India, and I remember vividly the accompanied excitement that these words would conjure, and the all-consuming beauty and vibrancy that would follow. Through my early childhood and well into my developmental years, my aesthetic sensibilities were […]
North London based artist and activist Rachelle Romeo’s work caught our eye with its powerful and poetic use of embroidery. Romeo’s stitched stories of trauma, belonging, and becoming are literally mapped onto the landscapes of London and the UK – striking visual reminders of the brutal colonial legacies and ongoing trauma of the Windrush scandal […]
Amy E. Elkins reviews handiwork by Sara Baume I am amazed by craft’s enduring capacity to express complexity in a time of crisis. In Sara Baume’s new book, handiwork, the crisis is both intimate and global.[1] Strikingly printed by Tramp Press in Ireland, handiwork invites the reader into spaces of reflection, an invitation made material […]
Dressby P.M. She had no need to tell the world her intention – the dress spoke for her. It told the world: ‘I will no longer be caged, I will be free, like the long flowing tresses of this gown. Watch, as they glide across the floor like a stream.Follow me into the water.I want […]
Aram Han Sifuentes‘s practice intersects sewing, social practice and subversion… In 2016, she began a powerful project titled ‘Protest Banner Lending Library’, which advocates for the importance of protest banners in public spaces. The workshops gave the chance for people to make their own banners in a supportive communal space whilst the library meant anyone […]
When one imagines a needlewoman from the early twentieth century, one is likely to envisage a pale and subservient figure, skirts sweeping the floor as she sits beside the fire, needle in hand, forging upon her lap another testament of her love for the husband she awaits so patiently. One will not see a smashed […]
I have recently encountered Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of the ‘rhizome’’, says Mary Sibande. ‘They say a rhizome has neither a beginning nor and end, but always a middle.’ The South African artist was referring specifically to her series of sculpture and textile works, The Purple Shall Govern (2013). The striking figure at […]
Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) is one of the most famous pieces of political art. Created in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in Picasso’s native Spain, by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the work combines the artist’s Cubist style with the traditions of political and religious banners. Guernica drew international attention […]
Two years ago while passing through Chueca in Madrid, my partner and I stopped by the little gallery Mad is Mad, on Calle Pelayo, where there has always been something to admire in the shop window. Mad is Mad sponsors quirky, out-of-the way art by emerging artists. It was June 2018. I was surprised and […]
The mysterious and enigmatic artist Madge Gill (1882-1961) defied all expectations of being a working class woman in the early 20th century. Hidden away at home, she produced a seemingly endless wealth of unique artwork almost entirely away from the public eye. Gill had no formal training, she produced the work on her own terms […]
