Archana’s making process involves collecting old memory artefacts such as photographs and maps then deconstructing them to re-use as threads. Archana’s is born of British and Indian heritage, and she specialises in stitch and fine art textiles.
Vintage maps used as the foundation of the work
Having been raised in India and now living in London, the uprooting and the subsequent re-rooting have been transformative, and the origin of the exhibited work lies in this. This exhibition reveals the evolution of her work, which follows the threads of transient boundaries and belongingness.
Re-imagined landscapes are inspired by the cycle of a day and are a harmonious representation of co-existence, multiplicity, and connectedness.
‘Five Times More’ depicts the intimate relationship between mother and child, reflecting on both personal and collective experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood.
Maggie Scott’s technical practice is unparalleled in the landscape of contemporary British art, sitting at the boundary of tapestry and digital media, she employs a combination of photography, digital collage and silk and then injects colour by laboriously pushing vibrant merino wool fibres through silk in a process known as Nuno felting.
The intensely physical process of felting is followed by the careful process of using stitch to emphasise the smaller details of an image, evoking both the physicality of childbirth and the careful attention and tenderness of what follows. In working with fibre Scott pushes a medium traditionally associated with craft into the realm of fine art. As a textile artist, Scott employs distinctly feminine materials, but with soft images, she speaks hard truths.
Birth is the most innate experience of human existence yet for centuries, childbirth has also been the most dangerous undertaking of a woman’s life. Rates of maternal mortality have dropped dramatically in Britain since the mid-18th century.
Nuno felted art
However, the effects of modern medicine have not been felt equally. In 2019 MBRACE UK published data within its Perinatal Mortality report, which revealed that people of colour remain at a much higher risk during pregnancy and childbirth within the British healthcare system. Most disturbingly the report revealed that in the United Kingdom a Black woman is five times more likely to die during childbirth than her white counterpart.
Five Times More humanises the statistics published by MBRACE UK.
Hand & Machine embroidered artwork by Vivienne Beaumont
Ripe with seeds, pomegranates and scenes of harvest, Vivienne’s work is shaped by stories and symbols. She takes inspiration from myths and nature, from female archetypes and the process of transformation. The work has a soulful quality and often a sense of otherworldliness – her frequent use of gold threads reflects something of the Rumpelstiltskin, the fairy tale. Her figurative scenes look to the ephemerality and cyclical nature of life, representing both life force and loss.
Hand & Machine embroidered artwork
“Fields are often aglow in the late summer, through the harvest and its aftermath. I try to capture something of this in my work, as well as something of the folk tale or fairy tale: the jeopardy of the miller’s daughter, the alchemy of weaving straw into gold. That these tales have endured the ages, suggests they hold a deeper meaning for us.
The Red Riding Hood story, for example, is at heart the tale of a maiden’s rite of passage. The young girl is growing up, the mother is letting her daughter go on her own into the woods. The story alludes to virginity and the spilling of blood. The wolf traditionally plays the role of the sexual predator, but I portray the wolf as the protector, the threat instead from the darkness and the unknown.
Mothers and daughters, love and rites of passage – the repeated cycles from one generation to the next – these loom large in my textile story.”
