Figuratively Speaking: A Review

Article Added: 16/11/2009 16:27:03
Figuratively Speaking is a fantastic exhibition currently showing at The Edge Gallery in Lancaster. We recently received the following review by Jennifer Pritchard Couchman a bridalwear designer and lecturer at Preston College and University Centre at Blackburn College.

‘Figuratively Speaking’ is an exhibition that explores the figure through stitch pushing the boundaries and processes in contemporary embroidery. Exhibiting artists include Cathy Cullis, Michelle Holmes, Priscilla Jones and Alice Kettle.

Cathy Cullis explores personal themes including dreams and memories translating them into tiny pictorial images, these are executed in machine embroidery and demonstrate her unique skill in identifying and exploiting meticulous detail. The embroideries are worked in dense stitch creating an intuitive response to the use of machine embroidery. One of her embroideries titled ‘Owl Dress’ depicts a figure wearing a garment adorned with a group of figures and an owl, the juxtaposition of the two features can only be described as a haunting image that evokes a truly emotional response.                      

Michelle Holmes also draws with stitch but in an entirely different way to Cullis. Focusing on the linier qualities the stitched line can create. Holmes works on a variety of carefully prepared background fabrics. The grounds themselves are considered in the extreme and are just as important as the quality of line she uses to produce her fragile figures. Holmes endeavours to create a sense of faded beauty in her subtle use of colour and tone. A re-occurring theme in her work is an obsession with journeys and for this exhibition she has been inspired by Lady Isabella Bird, whose novel titled A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains has been the focus for this new body of work. Holmes main piece in this exhibition captures the visual story of a life lived in this magnificent terrain with all its rugged beauty yet depicted in Holmes’s fine stitched lines. Fragments of fabric are used in soft colours to break the rigor of the stitch and add balance to a complex composition. The piece reads almost like a collection of nostalgic snap shots, stills from distant memories, a story which cannot fail to draw you in to Lady Isabella’s world.

Priscilla Jones’s response to the figure differs to the other exhibitors focusing on a three dimensional approach. A piece in her collection titled ‘Fly Away Home’ is a wire birdcage housing a surreal stitched figure half bird half woman, another piece is created from a mans starched collar depicting a disfigured fairy having lost her limbs long ago. Jones explores identity, memory and the translucency of time, reworking a range of recycled materials including broken ceramic dolls with stitch, silk, wax and wire. The quirky assembled figures are freely suspended almost dancing effortlessly through the air enabling us to watch them move and spin. Jones explores the subconscious depicting haunting and unnerving figures revealing an edge of surrealism that implies the common thread of personal memory.

Alice Kettle has extensively exhibited her embroideries all over the world and has a long standing reputation in the field as an artist who paints with stitch. Kettle’s stitched figures are a culmination of many hours spent drawing in a variety of mixed media processes. Included in this exhibition are two of Kettle’s mixed media studies demonstrating how she creates images for her stitched pieces giving a rare insight into the developmental processes of her visual language.

‘Figuratively Speaking’ is an exhibition that seams together the unparalleled work of four well known artists and articulates their individual desire to explore the figure, relating to the viewer a truly personal response. Each has developed a narrative that unites them in terms of theme but diversifies them in terms of method, stitch with its long history of story telling enables us to respond to these implied associations without the prejudice other creative mediums can evoke.

Figuratively Speaking is running from 7th November -24th December 2009. For more information please visit www.theedgegallery.co.uk