Artist Statements
Denise Watts (b.1952, England)
They say grief is the price we pay for love, it is inevitable as we grow older to lose parents or eventually friends, siblings or other older family members; but to lose a child, who one expects to out-live us is the cruellest kind of grief.
Small sculptures of horse hair, silk and linen are mounted on dolls made of paper mache and fabric. The dolls are dressed in vintage and antique textiles to represent lives lived, and the colour black for grief and red for pain. The dolls invite the conversation too distressing for empathy.
Denise Watts’ installation is best understood in the context of the quotes she used as inspiration for each sculpture
Jane Atkinson (b. 1950, England)
Do you remember how, during the Pandemic, the roads cleared of cars, the sky of planes and our factories of workers? Despite all that sacrifice, the level of Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) in our atmosphere still rose.
“Carbon Cloud”, designed from a photo (taken off the coast of Dorset, Southern England) in the latter half of 2019 to be labelled with its statistics, gave me nightly solace in lockdown.
My lace is a conversation about our beautiful planet and the peril in which we have placed it, and ourselves, if we continue to brush aside climate breakdown. I have used phenomena in my local wetland landscape to examine carbon capture, alien vegetation, drought, heat, CO₂ levels and the advancing seasons.
In 1911, when my grandmother was entering her teens, CO₂ stood at 300 ppm; when I reached that age in 1961 they were 319; when I started work in 1970, 325; when
I married in 1975, 331; when I had my daughter in 1986, 345; when my husband retired early in 2000, 367; when
I addressed climate breakdown in an exhibition in 2018, 405; now they stand at 426. Should we sacrifice personal preferences to save the planet? I have not flown since 2019; should I even be here?
Data gathered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Washington DC
Pierre Fouché (b.1977. South Africa)
Surfing is by nature a fleeting, gestural mark on an ocean wave -
an in-the-moment exuberance. I wanted to represent that in a Chinese Ink painting that also captures a moment of calm in the midst of a crashing wave. The only lace technique that requires a similar improvisation to surfing is free-style pieced lace.
Translating the ink & brush painting into lace made with audio tapes of evangelical proselytising draws attention to the variety of ways in which humans are trying to understand their spiritual natures. There are many paths. None can claim authority over the other, but any that don’t prioritise kindness and grace to others and nature must be flawed.
Lieve Smets (b.1976, Belgium)
Emptiness, or the interweaving of something with nothing, is inherent to lace. Due to its delicate appearance, lace strikingly symbolises transience.
The more holes something gets, the more it approaches the essence of lace, namely transparency.
Iron with rust holes is both less and more than the original object; the holes create new shapes that were not there before. Textiles can be opulent and luxurious, but also threadbare. When textiles show signs of wear, they take on extra meaning. It carries a story with it, it has “lived” and therefore radiates a special vulnerability.
In my work materials are charged with meaning and I try to capture the void.
We make our own memories. Certain memories can be continuously updated. They change or fade away. Details are lost and the gaps in the story are filled in with other details. It is a process that never stops. (Referring to “Making Memories”)
Lace is reduced to its essence - transparency - and linked to transience. (Referring to “Lace as Concept”)
Dagmar Beckel Machyčková (b. 1979, Czechoslovakia, lives in USA)
I am fascinated by human behaviour and how easily we choose to see complicated things as simple when most things are far from being black or white. Having lived in several countries throughout my life, and in different political systems I am fortunate to be able to look at situations through multiple lenses. In my lace, I want to offer these perspectives and challenge the viewer to contemplate multiple possibilities.
In “Talking to a Wall” it is the difference between the Iron curtain that kept people in versus the Mexican-American wall that’s intended to keep people out and pose the question of why build walls in the first place?
“When Men Speak”, is a portrait of a rally asking the viewer to see what role they play and whether they question the groupthink. Revolutions are the only things that can stop governments unfair to their people, but rallies are also the things that help carry dictators to the top.
In “Discovering Desires” I challenge the viewer to find their own passions and share them with the world instead of hiding behind the cloak of society’s expectations.
