Thursday, December 23, 2010

Inspired by the legacy of Anni Albers, Ruthin Craft Centre

Just thought I would share a few photographs of the exhibition currently on at Ruthin Craft Centre which includes two new pieces of work of mine.  Alongside the rare treat to see some of the woven and printed works by the legendary Anni Albers, there is an exhibition entitled Inspired by the Legacy of Anni Albers.  I was deeply honoured to be invited to exhibit in this show, as Albers is such icon in the world of textiles, who has been a major source of inspiration to me over the years.

The exhibition continues until the 6th February 2011.  Many thanks to Elen Bonner the Ruthin Craft Centre Education Officer who sent me these pictures after I forgot to take my own!

'Three x Five' (on wall), Horizon I-V (on plinth)



'Three x Five' hand woven strips, rewoven in a triaxial structure (the yellow is a brighter acid-yellow colour than that in this image)

Dorte Behn's work in foreground

Anni Albers exhibition

Ptolemy Mann to left, Wallace Sewell on back wall

Anni Albers rug produced by Christopher Farr, Ptolemy Mann to right

Fiona Mathison

Saturday, December 4, 2010

'Best Maker in Wales' award at Made by Hand

Well, Made By Hand at Tredegar House is going really well. I was awarded the Newport Council 'Best Maker in Wales' award yesterday.... a rather nice way to start the fair! Tomorrow is the final day, so do make sure you come and visit.

To whet the appetite, here's some pictures of my stand....



Monday, November 29, 2010

Latest news....


Just thought I’d let you know about some forthcoming events and other bits of news.

Firstly, you can find me from this Friday to Sunday at Wales’ first major contemporary craft fair: Made by Hand at Tredegar House in Newport. I’ll be exhibiting my Resonate sculptures and a number of framed ‘Jacquard Sketches’. I will also have a small table loom on the stand so you can get a glimpse of the weaving process. My stand number is P66 which is in the Pavilion. The opening hours are as follows:

Friday 11-7pm
Saturday 10-5pm
Sunday 10-5pm

Adult Day Ticket £5
Accompanied children under 14 FREE
Concessions (aged 15-18, students, unwaged & OAPS) £4
Family Day Ticket (2 Adults & 2 Children aged 15-18) £15
3 Day Weekend Ticket £9/£7 concession.

This Saturday, a major exhibition of Anni Albers work opens at Ruthin Craft Centre. For those of you that are unfamiliar with her, Albers was one of the most influential weave designers and artists of the last century. A graduate of the famous Bauhaus, this is a rare treat to see some of her graphic pattern design and woven samples in the UK, thanks to The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in the USA. Alongside this exhibition, there is a complimentary show entitled Inspired By: The Legacy of Anni Albers, which I am honoured to have two significant new pieces of work in. Ruthin Craft Centre is open 7 days a week and entry is free. The show continues to the 6th Feb 2011.

Alongside these events I have been busy finalising the design for the Museumaker commission to create a triptych window for The Beaney Museum and Art Gallery in Canterbury. The Museum is currently closed for renovation and for the building of an exciting new extension designed by SidellGibson Architects The commission will see the translation of my characteristic Loose Threads resin sculptures into laminated glass. Pictures of the final design and making process will soon be published on my blog: www.laurathomaswoventextiles.blogspot.com (please subscribe!)

The warp+weft exhibition I curated for Oriel Myrddin will be touring to Craft in the Bay, Cardiff in the New Year. It will be open to the public from: 7th January – 20th February. I will be giving a free gallery talk at 2pm on the 22nd January. To compliment the exhibition there will be a number of weave workshops and talks from other practitioners. Please visit the Craft in the Bay website for further details. The exhibition will then tour along with the warp+weft: from handloom to production exhibition (currently on at the National Wool Museum until the 8th Jan 2011) to Smith’s Row in Bury St Edmund's, who will also be planning a series of complimentary events. The exhibition will be open to the public from 12th March – 30th April.

I am also busily planning for my next curation project for Llantarnam Grange. The exhibition will feature a new body of work from myself, alongside the work of 5 artist-makers that I have selected. The exhibition is entitled ‘Resonant Colour’ with the connecting thread between the makers and their work being an inherent vibrant and intelligent approach to colour. I am delighted that Sara Moorhouse, Ann Sutton, Nicholas Rena, Heike Brachlow and Kate Blee have all agreed to contribute work. The exhibition will also have publication featuring essays from Sara Moorhouse and Dr Royden Hunt. The exhibition will be open to the public from 19.03.11 - 07.05.11.

Lastly, I shall be moving to a new studio at Model House Craft and Design Centre in Llantrisant, just outside of Cardiff in the New Year. The move-in date has yet to be confirmed, but I shall keep you posted! The Centre has a lovely shop and gallery space downstairs, with around 20 studios upstairs which is open to visitors to have a look around.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Wales Music Foundation stand at Womex


I love it how my work can crop up in surprising places.  Above is a picture of the Music Wales stand at WOMEX. The wonderful Kutchibok Design were responsible for all the branding and stand design, and between them and Wales Arts International who were supporting the venture, they decided one of my jacquard woven Welsh landscape views would make a suitable backdrop. Cardiff is one of the candidates to host the WOMEX festival in 2013..... and I've got my fingers and toes crossed that it's successful.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Affordable Art Fair, London, 21-24 Oct 2010

Just a quickie to let you know that you can see a selection of my framed jacquard artworks and resin sculptures at the Affordable Art Fair with the Interior Angle Gallery, stand F3 in London this week.


The fair is open to the public from Thurs 21st to Sunday 24th and can be found in the Battersea Park.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Cardiff Design Festival 2010 awards

I was delighted to be commissioned once again this year to create the Cardiff Design Festival Awards.  The theme behind this years events is 'into the light', and the ceremony is being held at the Coal Exchange in Cardiff Bay.  I therefore opted to have dark blue, grey and charcoal threads (to represent the coal) in silk cotton and linen merging in to silver lurex and light reflective threads. Winners to be announced this evening.




Monday, October 11, 2010

My other blog.....

Just a quick little reminder that I have just set up another blog, where I will be collecting together all the interesting weave related 'stuff' that I come across on my travels and online research.  I hope in time it will build up to become a valuable source of information for everyone interested in contemporary woven textiles in art, design, craft, fashion, science and industry.

Please do follow this link to the warp and weft blog and if you like what you see, subscribe and forward the info on to your contacts.

Many thanks.

Some more photo's from the warp+weft exhibition at Oriel Myrddin

Have been delivering a series of gallery talks at Oriel Myrddin over the past few weeks, and took the opportunity before speaking to my West Wales School of the Arts textiles students last week to take some more pictures of the exhibition. The show is on until the 31st October.

Ptolemy Mann in foreground, Peter Collingwood, Ann Sutton and Hiroko Takeda on wall.

Ainsley Hillard


Ismini Samanidou with Gary Allson

L-R Ann Sutton, Hiroko Takeda


Laura Thomas

Reiko Sudo, Nuno

Reiko Sudo, Nuno

Priti Vega

Sue Hiley Harris

Makeba Lewis

Ann Sutton

Hiroko Takeda

Ann Richards

Kathy Shicker


Lucy McMullen

Ann Sutton

Hiroko Takeda



Priti Vega in foreground, Peter Collingwood and Ann Sutton on wall

Sunday, October 10, 2010

New Melin Tregwynt colourways @ 100% Design




I've been working with Melin Tregwynt for many years - all stemming from a work placement I undertook with the company when I was in the second year of my BA in Woven Textiles.  Over the last year, I've been doing lots of CAD colourways of their archive and contemporary fabrics...... and the latest batch was launched at 100% Design last month.  It was the first time I'd seen the selected colourways 'in the flesh' and I was delighted.... all my favourites colours!

Friday, October 1, 2010

Material Matters, Howard Gardens Gallery, UWIC, Cardiff 4th-28th October

Next week a new exhibition featuring some of my jacquard and resonate works opens in the Howard Gardens Gallery in UWIC (University of Wales in Cardiff).

For this exhibition coinciding with the Cardiff Design Festival, I find myself in very illustrious company. I'm exhibiting alongside a very international line-up of contemporary textile artists: Keireine Canavan, Philippa Lawrence, Cathy Treadaway, Helen Watkins, Brett Alexandrer (Australia), Catherine Bebout (USA) and Ainsley Hillard.

The private view is on the 7th October - so if you're in town, drop me a line and I'll email you further details.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

warp+weft gallery talk at Oriel Myrddin Gallery, Carmarthen, 2pm, 22nd Sept 2010

Just a quickie to let you know I am giving a gallery talk tomorrow about the warp+weft exhibition I've curated at Oriel Myrddin in Carmarthen.  Its at 2pm.  Directions etc can be found here: http://www.orielmyrddingallery.co.uk/

warp+weft: cross disciplanary approaches to weave symposium at The National Wool Museum, 11th Sept 2010


Dr Jessica Hemmings. Photo: Kathryn Campbell Dodd.
 To mark the opening of the warp+weft exhibitions at Oriel Myrddin and the National Wool Museum, Dr Jessica Hemmings kindly put together a brilliant symposium exploring the unexpected connections with weave.

The day begin with Jessica's introduction, highlighting some wonderful examples of practice within the art textiles sphere which is woven, or references the process of weaving.  My absolute favourite example was the 'Wind up: Walking the Warp' project by Anne Wilson.  I thought the below image was so powerful - a real visual spectacle which to a non-weaver must seem utterly bizarre.  It's also a profound comment on the passing of time, the nature of craftsmanship, and the power of process.  You can read more about this intriguing project here: http://www.annewilsonartist.com/windup-chicago-walking.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28703188@N02/4250155682/
Anne Wilson, “Wind-Up: Walking the Warp,” 2008
Photo: Surabhi Ghosh
The first invited speaker was Professor Lesley Millar, well known for her high profile curatorial projects such as Cloth and Culture, 21:21 and Through the Surface.  Lesley spoke eloquently about constructed narratives implicit in the weave process, a concept harnessed to great effect by many of the artists she has worked with in her curation projects.  At the end of her presentation she told us of her newly launched web gallery / educational resource for textile art, Transition and Influence.

Professor Lesley Millar. Photo: Kathryn Campbell Dodd.

We then had a presentation from Dr Wayne Forster, Head of the Welsh School of Architecture, which recounted much of the dialogue between Wayne and myself exploring the common ground between the architectural and textile disciplines.  You may remember I blogged last year about the Architextiles series of workshops I ran with Wayne at the School of Architecture.  Wayne presented many of the examples of cross disciplinary works in both textiles and architecture we'd come across in our research and how this fed into the workshops we ran for the first and second year architecture students.


Dr Wayne Forster. Photo: Kathryn Campbell Dodd
 Following a very tasty lunch in the Museum restaurant, we returned to lecture from Andy Ross, the Director of ASF Shetland, part of the Centre for Creative Industries in Shetland.  A trained opera singer, Andy ensured that anybody veering towards a post-lunch lull was re-energised.  He opened by singing a traditional weavers song, and then proceeded to explain his absorbing creative journey between textiles and music exploring where the crossovers are, such as in language and rhythm. He even got the delegates singing - quite appropriate for Wales!

Andy Ross. Photo: Kathryn Campbell Dodd
 During a coffee break there was then a screening of two short films by Matt Hulse Light Work: many hands and Anne Wilson’s Walking the Warp.

To conclude Ruth Greany, a textile trend researcher for WGSN talked about her former career as a woven fashion textile designer for Woven Studio and her work now at WGSN, exploring how trends are researched, identified, synthesised and presented to clients.

Ruth Greany. Photo: Kathryn Campbell Dodd
The symposium generated a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm on the day - a real feeling that the weave fraternity is starting to find its voice.  It was referred to time and time again by speakers and delegates that weaving has not been seen as a sexy discipline and as a result just hasn't been in the limelight such as knitting has in recent years.Craft skills are under threat, there aren't many job opportunities for weave students to aspire towards, and there isn't a strong collectors market for art and craft textiles.  But little is to be achieved by just repeating these laments.  Weavers need to be working harder to bring what they are doing to the fore.  The exhibitions I've curated had this very aim - to celebrate the achievements of the creative and entrepreneurial weave artists and designers working in this field, to both inform the public and to act as inspiration to other weavers.  We need to create our own opportunities and keep striving to create the most extraordinary woven textiles thus claiming our rightful place as an important and stimulating applied art / craft / design area.

As a result of spending two days at the symposium and the various exhibition openings talking to a veritable 'who's who' in the world of weaving, I've been mulling over how to continue the momentum of interest and energy thats seems to have started.  Ideas are already forming, and I'll tell you about them once they start to become reality.  One thing I have decided to start now is a new blog which will record all the interesting weave related items I find happening in art  design, craft, science, industry and academia.  I spend a little too much time researching online and it would be wonderful to be able to share the suprising, curious, intrguing, beautiful weave related images and links I find with you.  It will also review exhibitions I go to, books I read, and any other curious snippets of relevant info.  I hope it will in time become a valuable resource for students, researchers and curators who are exploring weave in all its guises, but also the general art/design/craft enthusiast.  There's not much posted yet (only just started!) but please subscribe and tell your friends and colleagues about it too: http://www.thewarpandweftblog.blogspot.com/