ALICE KETTLE ANDIA NEWTON ELINA FLYRIN FREDDIE ROBINS HAMISH HALLEY HEIDI PEARCE KAROLINA DWORSKA LARA SALOUS LIZA DICKSON LOLA PEDERSEN

Martin Maloney

TEXTILES ARE SOFT. They are comforting. They are clothes, rugs, blankets, and our favourite plushie toys; they are durable, yet malleable, and ultimately ephemeral. Textiles are “feminine”, knitted by our grandma and repaired by our mother. Textiles are apocalyptic. They portray war, violence, and the rapture. They’re an itchy old dusty carpet. They are precious artefacts that tell us about our past. They are traces of hands, stitches, rips, and careful folds. A million loops, looping in and around each other, looped carefully by a pair of hands.

The idea for Creature Comforts came from a conversation between myself and Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi, the Director of JGM Gallery. We were discussing quilts; handmade, traditional, enchanting. Their allure, we thought, was not only their tessellating colourful designs but, on a more basic level, the intricate care that was required in their construction. I remembered a show of Gee’s Bend quilts and how amazed I was by their complexity and by the way the artists had imbued everyday textiles, such as denim trousers, with immense value.

As we discussed quilts, we realised that a group shop of textile work could be used to showcase remarkable talent as well as the medium’s complex context in relation to history, gender and notions of value. Intrinsically, textiles are comforting. They’re soft, and we usually wrap ourselves in them, or sit on them. They have been fundamental to human life since our very beginnings; they furnish our dwellings and keep us warm and comfortable. Yet, historically, these tenderly woven surfaces have been used to showcase a myriad of apocalyptic events. The Bayeux Tapestry details the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The Unicorn Tapestries, resting quietly in the Met Cloisters, present us with a disturbing and perplexing hunt for a mythological beast. The violence of these masterpieces, especially in contrast to the soft material with which they are rendered, never ceases to shock me.

Creature Comforts explores these multifaceted aspects of textiles; of comfort, chaos and conflict. From one side, we have comfort; hanging tufted sculptures of blissful pastels and tender quilts, hand stitched and stuffed with hay. There are embroidered images of the everyday and woven stools which have been hand spun and lovingly made. Then there are depictions of chaos: strange, dog-like creatures clambering out of pillars and embroidered Korean “Dokkaebi” spirits, breathing life into old gloves and socks. And lastly, conflict; woven and knitted tapestries, harbingers of something sinister. Whether it is a mysterious threat, an internal mental conflict, or the suffocating feeling of impending environmental disaster; the soft appeal of the tapestry pulls the viewer into its madness.

Creature Comforts traverses the endless possibilities of the medium and the ways in which its 14 artists embrace and play with its expectations.

- Written by Karolina Dworska