A Place for Creativity and Friendship
VANESSA MARR
This August, a group of local artists from the textile group unFOLD, will present the culmination of two years’ work with a show entitled Raft: A Place of Safety and Survival. It was initially inspired by their individual and diverse experiences of lockdown, but the loss of their founder member Christine Chester, from cancer in June 2023, brought a new meaning to this work, as a reminder of the power of creativity to heal and unite in the face of adversity.
Each artist has responded to the theme through her preferred creative approach. For Carly Ralph, proximity to the sea provided “calm reflection, drama and distraction” during a time of confinement. Her work, The Sea is my Raft echoes this sentiment through mixed media textiles.
For Sarah Welsby, a combination of paint, folding, sanding, stitch, and collage offered an opportunity to test the elasticity of discarded packaging, resulting in a personal metaphor for resilience.
Christina Ellcock was inspired by the contrast between the outside world and the shelter and protection provided by home. Her textured, careful compositions bring atmosphere and meaning through a limited colourway.
Home life is also a theme in Vanessa Marr’s work, which explores domestic spaces, such as kitchen tables, as metaphorical rafts where family dramas are played out time and time again. Her illustrative and poetic response revolves around a tablecloth featuring the words “All these storms, lay heavy on my heart”.
Sinéad Smith’s contribution celebrates friendship bound into two quilts, one “big, bold, and bright” created from fabric dyed over years of living in the States, the Middle East, and the UK. The other, constructed from tea towels donated by friends and overdyed, symbolises “the foundation upon which I stand”. The late Christine Chester’s work, started but never completed, will also be on display. Collectively, this work has soothed and inspired, challenged and comforted its makers as a tangible reminder of the power of friendship to bring women together.
RAFT will be at Hastings Arts Forum gallery, Tuesday 6 – Sunday 18 August (closed Mondays), private view 6-8pm Friday 9 August. Meet the artists: Sunday 18 August, 2-4 p.m. Further information: unfoldtextiles.com, Instagram @unfold_textiles
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