The Bowery

All are welcome to the preview of Textures of Spurn at The Bowery (Headingley, Leeds) this Friday.  The event is from 6-8pm and there will be refreshments and nibbles.  Also showing is In Search of Green by Hannah Lamb.  Hannah's work is based around her experience of woodland and river near her home.  These two exhibitions will be a feast of landscape inspired textiles.

This exhibition will feature Spurn Cloth #2, hung in a different format to the previous venues and with an extended installation unique to The Bowery.

sorting textures

I've been sorting through some of the textures and ideas I collected at Spurn last weekend.  One of the main things that strikes me about the place are the bands of texture and line: linear arrangements and almost always horizontal. 

As the tide comes up and goes down there is this constant change of the bands: 

patterns in the sand, 

the strips of salt marsh on the estuary side, 

never-ending sequence of waves rolling in on the seaward side, 

lines of groynes.

As a way of focusing myself I sorted the images that I'd had printed into three groups of textures:
ripples and wave patterns in the sand;

the waves themselves and the marks left when the water sorts and drops the material it is moving;

  

bold textures of the rusty, weathered groynes, the saltmarsh and other debris on the beach.

 

interesting find

I came across the blog of Annemarie Tickle recently and have started corresponding with her.  Her work is based on the landscape of Spurn and particularly the view across the Humber to the south bank.  We share common interests and we hope to meet up when I'm next at Spurn.  

introduction

Hello! I'm Alice and I am Artist in Residence at Spurn Point during this year. My residency is due to start very soon so I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm thrilled to be following on from the previous artists that have worked at Spurn - what a wonderful place to take inspiration from.  We've been unable to continue the previous blog used by Spurn Artists (link on the right) into this year's project, hence this new beginning.


I work mainly in textiles and printmaking. I completed a degree in Contemporary Surface Design & Textiles last year and am now working freelance as an artist. You can find out more about my work here and here. I use different print techniques in layers with hand stitch, sometimes using the stitches themselves to make texture for print. I am using paper a lot at the moment (many textile artists use paper): it is effectively a non-woven cloth, just like felt. I like the stiffness of it to stitch into.

I am committed to using colour from natural sources and like to experiment with mark making using colour directly from plant material and from rusty objects. Much of my recent work explores the kinds of marks that are found at the edge of water: the lines and ripples left on the beach; objects that have been discarded and sorted by the sea. I didn't set out to work to coastal themes but it is something that has developed over the past couple of years and now I have the opportunity to really bring these ideas together and explore Spurn, its detail and texture and its constant shifting of material.

My work is fairly abstract. There may be suggestions of recognizable things but really I'm interested in conveying a sense of something rather than depicting things as they are. I sketch a lot as a starting point to any project so some of the first things you will see from my time at Spurn will be drawings. I use drawing as a way of recording my experience of a place.

My background prior to being an artist was in nature conservation. I used to work for Yorkshire Wildlife Trust as one of the Otters and Rivers Project Officers. My first degree was in physical geography so my artistic practice has a firm backdrop in landscape and environmental issues.

I hope to keep this blog updated regularly during the next 6 months or so and I'd love to hear from readers who have followed the various artists in residence at Spurn or who have their own experiences of Spurn that they'd like to share.  What does Spurn Point mean to you?