4th November- Artist Research- Alice Kettle

4th November- Artist Research-  Alice Kettle 
Artist research in relevance to my planned work with embroidery, for the memorial fabric works. Alice Kettle is an artist that works with sewing machine embroidery. 


Alice Kettle, Riku


https://www.textileartist.org/alice-kettle-reinvent-rework-reconstruct

http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/upcomingexhibitions/alicekettle/

Alice Kettle is a contemporary textile/fibre artist based in the UK. She has established a unique area of practice by her use of a craft medium, consistently and on an unparalleled scale.

Her stitched works, many the size of huge figurative tapestries, exploit the textures and effects made possible through the harnessing of a mechanical process to intuitive and creative ends.

She is currently a Professor in Textile Arts in MIRIAD Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Her work is represented in various public collections such as the Crafts Council London, the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, the Museo Internationale delle Arti Applicate Oggi, Turin, Italy. Commissions include the National Library of Australia, the Scottish High Court in Edinburgh, Gloucester and Winchester Cathedrals and the School of Music & Drama at Manchester University.

Reflections

I think what has been most striking about kettle's work is her definitive love for the process and the materials. The way in which she undertook training in textiles and has long been making/mending her own clothes. These skills are vastly creative and fine tuned to produce these large scale works. I also want to work on a large scale and the 'drawing' process with the machine could be a way of achieving the effect I would like. Hand stitching would take to long however I will make some testers to try this theory out. Although her work is figurative it struck me that the forms, shapes and 'figures' are almost haunted by distortion. The scale of the works varies and this adds to the dream like state of the forms. The muted colour palette is reminiscent of a painting and the block work is also in lined with a certain era of visual production. The contemporary modes at work in her work are surely rooted in the abstraction due to the traditional materials used. the modern way in which she manipulates these material however is also of interest to me as I will be engaging in alternative dying techniques and second hand material that has already lived a life itself. The forced combining of fabric, thread and layers investigates concepts of displacement and replacement. These themes are of most interest to me within Kettles work and I enjoyed the way the work has no prior expectation positioned on it. My work can sometimes fall foul to this however removal of labels and limit of text is something i plan to use to mitigate this.