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Creature Comforts: An exhibition of daring contemporary textiles, featuring 14 artists

Past exhibition
9 November 2022 - 21 January 2023
  • Images
  • Overview
  • Selected Works
  • Installation Views
  • Press
Images

Woo Jin Joo, Re-New, 2021, embroidery, old sweater, 100cm x 125cm x 25cm

Overview
Molly Kent, 'Stuck in Limbo', 2021, 53cm x 35 cm
Molly Kent, Stuck in Limbo, 2021, 53cm x 35cm

 “Textiles are soft. They are comforting. They are clothes, rugs, blankets, and our favourite plushie toys; they are durable, yet malleable, and ultimately ephemeral. Textiles are ‘feminine’, knitted by our grandma and repaired by our mother. Textiles are apocalyptic. They portray war, violence, and the rapture. They’re an itchy old dusty carpet. They are precious artefacts that tell us about our past. They are traces of hands, stitches, rips, and careful folds. A million loops, looping in and around each other, looped carefully by a pair of hands.” 

-Karolina Dworska

 

The idea for Creature Comforts initially came about after a conversation between myself and Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi, the Director of JGM Gallery. We were discussing quilts; handmade, traditional, enchanting. Their allure was not only their tessellating, colourful designs but, on a more basic level, the amount of intricate, tender care that was required in their construction. I remembered seeing a show of Gee’s Bend quilts and being blown away by their complexity, but also by the way the artists re-used everyday textiles like denim trousers and imbued them with immense value.

 

As we reminisced about these quilts, Jennifer and I decided that a textile show would be a great way of showcasing remarkable talent, whilst also examining the medium’s complex context in relation to history, gender and notions of value. Intrinsically, I think textiles are comforting. They are soft, and we usually wrap ourselves in them, or sit on them. They have been fundamental to human life since the beginning of civilisation; they furnish our dwellings and they keep us warm and comfortable. And yet these tenderly woven, embroidered, hand-knitted surfaces have been used to showcase a myriad of apocalyptic events. The Bayeux Tapestry details the battle of Hastings in 1066. The Unicorn Tapestries, quietly resting in the Met Cloisters, presents us with a disturbing and perplexing hunt for a mythological beast. The Apocalypse Tapestries in Angers, with its delicate fibres contorted into biblical scenes.  The violence of these masterpieces never ceases to shock me.

 

Creature Comforts explores these multifaceted aspects of textiles; of comfort, chaos and conflict. From one side, we have comfort; immensely tender quilts, hand stitched and stuffed with hay, and hanging tufted sculptures of blissful pastels. We see embroidered images of the everyday and woven stools, hand spun and hand-dyed. They are lovingly made and reinvigorate local craft traditions. 

 

We have chaos: strange, plushie dog-like creatures clambering out of the pillar and embroidered Korean "Dokkaebi" spirits breathing life into old gloves and socks.  On the walls, there are cross-stitched  abstractions and tufted rugs of mystifying, otherworldly scenes.

 

And lastly, conflict, appearing in the woven and knitted tapestries, harbingers of something sinister. Whether it is a mysterious threat, an internal, mental conflict or the suffocating feeling of impending environmental disaster, the soft appeal of the tapestry pulls one into its madness. The exhibition traverses the endless playful possibilities of the medium and the ways in which its 14 artists embrace and play with its expectations.

 

- Written by Karolina Dworska (Curator of Creature Comforts)

 

For a full catalogue of works, please contact info@jgmgallery.com.

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Selected Works
  • Molly Kent, Stuck in Limbo, 2022
    Molly Kent, Stuck in Limbo, 2022
  • Freddie Robins Be Afraid, 2019 Machine knitted wool tapestry 300cm x 190cm
    Freddie Robins
    Be Afraid, 2019
    Machine knitted wool tapestry
    300cm x 190cm
  • Woo Jin Joo, Re-New, 2021
    Woo Jin Joo, Re-New, 2021
  • Alice Kettle, Lady With A Bowl, 2020
    Alice Kettle, Lady With A Bowl, 2020
  • Heidi Pearce, Dante (nervous), 2022
    Heidi Pearce, Dante (nervous), 2022
  • Karolina Dworska, Bankside Gifts, 2022
    Karolina Dworska, Bankside Gifts, 2022
  • Sebastian Sochan, Keep the trace of our memories, 2022
    Sebastian Sochan, Keep the trace of our memories, 2022
  • Lara Salous, Wool Stool 2, 2022
    Lara Salous, Wool Stool 2, 2022
  • Andia Newton, Beautiful Awful Heat Death of the Solar System , 2022
    Andia Newton, Beautiful Awful Heat Death of the Solar System , 2022
  • Hamish Halley Hay Quilt, 2022 Naturally dyed cotton, linen, wool, silk, and Scoths Timothy hay 103cm x 107cm
    Hamish Halley
    Hay Quilt, 2022
    Naturally dyed cotton, linen, wool, silk, and Scoths Timothy hay
    103cm x 107cm
  • Liza Dickson polarity_shift_ >, 2022 Cotton and polycotton 50cm x 2000cm
    Liza Dickson
    polarity_shift_ >, 2022
    Cotton and polycotton
    50cm x 2000cm
  • Lola Pedersen, Pixel Affection, 2022
    Lola Pedersen, Pixel Affection, 2022
  • Elina Flyrin, That which I hope for, 2022
    Elina Flyrin, That which I hope for, 2022
  • Martin Maloney, Red Velvet, 2022
    Martin Maloney, Red Velvet, 2022
  • Alice Kettle, Mother and Baby, Red, 2019
    Alice Kettle, Mother and Baby, Red, 2019
Installation Views
  • Jgm Creature Comforts Install Views 10
  • Jgm Creature Comforts Install Views 04
Press
  • Embroidery - The Textile Art Magazine

    Interview with Woo Jin Joo on textiles and 'Creature Comforts'
    Karolina Dworska, January 2, 2023
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