A Stitch In Stone
| Contemporary textile artist Sue Lawty applied natural stones on a gallery wall of the Victoria and Albert Museum to create “Order” in 2005. |
Contemporary textile artist creates a new spin on textile making
With stone as her warp, and space as her weft, textile artist Sue Lawty initiates a dialogue between the study of textiles and the individuality of mark making in her creation of contemporary textiles.
After Lawty’s first solo exhibition moved to the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in spring 2005, she soon became the museum’s first textile artist in residence. Since then, she has literally made her mark upon the walls of this London institution.
In search of a much larger canvas for two consequent temporary installations, Lawty painstakingly glued “Order,” a textile made up of thousands of sorted and graded tiny stone slivers, and “Hieroglyph,” created out of fragments of shell, directly onto the plaster of the museum’s gallery walls. Both pieces were exhibited for eight months until September 2006.
Lawty explains that her work is an exploration of what fascinates her most: the individuality and uniqueness of marks. Lawty finds textile making with fragments of the earth as the perfect outlet to explore both ideas.
In “Concealed, Discovered, Revealed,” her online blog, Lawty writes, “My work is abstract. It is informed by the land—most particularly by rock for its embodiment of time and structure. And it is informed through the study of textile—looking at qualities of texture, material, rhythm and, most importantly, structure. I am passionate about both. Both inform each other.”
Currently, Lawty is studying the extensive textile collection at the V&A to inform and inspire her next work—a permanent acquisition in the contemporary textile gallery.
“It’s fascinating to study textiles such as the plain weave cloth of the Egyptians,” Lawty says. “The shifts and changes, the rhythm and repetition of weaving are virtually imperceptible. In the act of weaving, an image and structure are interlocked, which is very similar to the formation of rock and landscape. It is completely individual.”
Lawty’s residency will continue as she develops her latest project, drafts a book that will have documented her artistic process during her time at the V&A, and teaches a class in textile demonstration. Visit vam.ac.uk for more information.
