I’m pleased to announce that “Moors of Home ” has been selected by Ryedale Folk Museum for the In The Open Exhibition. The selection panel was made up of artists, Joe Cornish, Kane Cunningham, Layla Khoo and Jen Smith.
In The Open Exhibition
Size 21 x 27 cm. The piece is hand embroidered and hand stitched with vintage Sylko thread on cotton cloth Eco printed with leaves and petals from my lockdown garden in Summer 2020. To read more about this artwork, please visit this post.
Moors of Home
The exhibition runs from 18th September – 14th November at Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton le Hole, North Yorkshire, YO62 6UA. A printed exhibition catalogue will be available via the Museum.
I think the past year has taught us all to enjoy the simple things in life. It’s been a long time since we all had the freedom to travel where and when we choose. This got me wondering. If I could go anywhere in the UK, where would I go? My chosen place is a scene perfectly described in Moors of Home.
Moors of Home
‘Moors of Home’ was designed in Spring 2021 during lockdown in the UK and is about a special place I long to return to once ‘normality’ returns. The central panel is an extract from the poem ‘Pennine Ramble’ written by Ebron. It was first published in “A Lancashire Miscellany”, a newspaper column featured in weekend editions of the Oldham Chronicle between 1956 and 1959.
Work in progress
The words around the outer border depict a memory from my own childhood of visiting my Grandparents in Stacksteads, Lancashire.
On sunny days they would pack a picnic and say ‘Let’s go up clough’. For me this meant a short walk up the footpath, past the farm with a Border Collie dog and ducks, over the stile and through the broken dry-stone walls, followed by a steep climb up to the clough and the brook where the water flowed fresh from the moors. I’ve spent many summers since, sitting on the same rock, under the tree and paddling my feed in the cool water.
Moors of Home
Size 21 x 27 cm. The piece is hand embroidered and hand stitched with vintage Sylko thread on cotton cloth Eco printed with leaves and petals from my lockdown garden in Summer 2020.
Moors of Home is part of a body of work about my Lancashire roots.
Size 24 x 24 cm. Central panel 21 x 21 cm. The piece is hand embroidered and hand stitched with vintage Sylko thread. Hand and Shuttle: Eco-leaf printed vintage Lancashire cotton cloth. Vintage Sylko thread. Outer border: Linen, surface designed with bleach and discharge paste. Vintage Sylko thread. Designed and hand stitched in three weeks.
The piece shows a Lancastrian weaving shuttle in a Cotton Weavers hand. Cotton Weavers were predominantly women and were paid for each piece of cloth produced, so speed and accuracy were important. This made them heavily reliant upon the Tacklers – who were all men – to repair the looms the women worked on as quickly as possible. The Tacklers often abused this position including incidents of sexual abuse and harassment.
Resilience
The words around the border of the piece are from a poem submitted by a Weaver to the ‘The Factory Times’ – a newspaper which championed workers’ rights and unionization in order to prevent such abuse and improve working conditions.
Women Cotton Weavers were actually some of the most highly paid and unionized female manual workers in Victorian Britain and some took part in the early women’s suffrage movement in Manchester during the latter part of the 19th Century.
Hand embroidered words around the artwork
The final stitch
Elizabeth Dubbelde of Berry Quilting set the challenge for embroiderers and textile artists to create a work under the theme EmpoweRED. ‘What can I do to make a stand about injustices, to raise my voice in protest? Hence “Empowered” gives us an opportunity through art textiles to raise our voices to show solidarity & support to victims of sexual assault. I urge you to raise your voice by creating a piece of work that relates to the theme of Empowered.’ Elizabeth Dubbeld.
Creating ‘Resilience’ has been a real learning curve for me. It was designed and constructed in a completely different way to any of my previous art. With each new piece I find myself pushing the boundaries of my abilities to see what I can possibly achieve.
