Signature XI

Zero3 Textile Artists

Signature XI – Zero3 Textile Artists

Zero3 is a group of 11 artists from diverse backgrounds working together with the shared aim of making contemporary work and actively promoting modern fibre art whilst respecting traditional standards of craftsmanship. Their common theme is the use of cloth and other fibres, used either for innovative mark making or as a surface for embroidery, Signature XI will present a visual dialogue, with the aim of dispelling and challenging the perception of textiles as purely craft and design, and promoting them as a valid and thought provoking art form, offering an insight into contemporary textile art relevant to today.

Audrey Critchley

I use ideas and influences from travel, study, and research. I work on white cotton cloth with dyes, inks and paints.
Currently I have been using a pale pallet of colours with a breakdown technique adding hand sewing to finish the piece.

Autumn – Audrey Critchley (Detail)

Thoughts of an Old Country – Audrey Critchley

Autumn – Audrey Critchley

Alison Garrett

Having started as a traditional quilter, over the last decade I have gradually broken away from this discipline of needlecraft. Inspired by the art textile movement I have moved and continue to move more and more towards this end of the textile spectrum.
Presently my work has three strands. The first is observing and recording, in the medium of textiles, everyday modern life. Sometimes looking at the big picture but often observing the lives of Mr. & Mrs. Nobody in Particular. The second strand is based on place – Chichester Harbour, a place that has always been part of my life, where its moods engendered by weather and season provide endless sources of inspiration. The third: catching small still moments, when the mind is allowed to prevail in the cacophony of 21st century life.
These different strands, though separate, make up the whole that provides the inspiration, thoughts and dreams that culminate in my textile narrative.
No rule is absolute but for the most part I dye and print my own fabrics.

Orkney – Alison Garrett

Harbour Thoughts II – Alison Garrett

Noughts & Crosses – Alison Garrett

Cindy Kearney

The starting point for my work is a photograph, normally one I have taken, or one of my drawings.
I paint or draw the image, or part of it, directly onto my fabric using procion or acrylic dyes combined with wax resist to create a base on which to sew.
Machine stitching is my preference and I use the stiches as a drawn line, overlaying colour on colour to achieve a dense stitched surface and thereby create depth in the piece.
Although I have found inspiration in many different things in the time I have been working with textiles, in my current work I enjoy finding and exploring the depth in the subject.

2 Yellow Windows – Cindy Kearney

Yellow Window – Cindy Kearney

Blue Window – Cindy Kearney

Gail Parker

I was born in California, before moving to London via Montreal, Quebec. I have a BSc in Botany from Goldsmith’s College, a Post Graduate Certificate in Education, and a Foundation Degree in Photography & Digital Imaging.
I work with textiles. I like the pliability, and texture, fabric can give to a composition. I like the feel of cloth in my hand.
Light and shadow, resulting in strong contrast are the backboneof my work. This play of light is usually accompanied by luscious colour. By hand dyeing my fabric, I can achieve unexpected results.
I prefer to work in the abstract as an emotional response to the fabric, a mood or a place. Lately, my pieces include hand stitching. This is a surprise, as it has on occasion taken me a year to sew on a button.

Mountain – Gail Parker

Boxes – Gail Parker

Anemone Flower – Gail Parker

Janine Ayres

The curiosity that led me to a life in science dictates my work. Recently I have been exploring the extraordinary world of quantum mechanics; giving images to things that exist in more than one state at the same time or do not exist at all until observed. The idea of being but not being, led on to the consideration of the mind and what it may mean to “be”. I choose cloth as my medium in order to explore texture and layering unobtainable in more solid and conventional media. I dye and print my own cloth. My passion for stitch leads me to surface decoration that can add an extra dimension to the story of the piece.

Rare Earths – Janine Ayres (Detail)

Wet Windows – Janine Ayres

Rare Earths – Janine Ayres

Janet Atherton

My work is frequently process led using dye, paint, mono printing, and screen printing and is inspired by social and cultural issues and the layers of time.
Although pieces are planned, work often evolves in the making, with mind mapping leading onto rough sketches and my preference is to then work directly onto the fabric.
Initial thoughts, leading to trials, tend to be as important as the finished piece and I view experimenting, (play), as an important part of my working method considering samples as important as the finished piece.

It’s Rarely Black and White – Janet Atherton

Summer Awakening, ‘Sweet Peas’ – Janet Atherton

Traces II – Janet Atherton

Janet Twinn

My recent work has been about landscape, the details that make up the landscape, the changing seasons and the passage of time.
It is a personal landscape grounded in the observed: above all it is the regenerative power of nature, which nurtures and informs my practice.

Autumn Twilight – Janet Twinn

Field Margins – Janet Twinn

Maggie Barber

My current work evolves from my love of ancient calligraphy and texts from which I am developing my own stitched language. This is an ongoing exploration involving both machine and hand stitching.
My roots are in traditional quilt making. Stitch and colour have always been my passion. Dyeing and printing on natural fibres, particularly silks and cottons create a base on which to explore and incorporate complex stitched marks. My work is intended to draw the viewer in to examine the minute detail of the stitch.

Aureolana – Maggie Barber

Feminorum – Maggie Barber

Elevations – Maggy Barber

Rosemary Hufton

I work with hand dyed, screen printed, and painted fabrics embellished with stitch. I also use recycled and salvaged materials almost exclusively and take enormous pleasure from their essence and history.
Dismantling discarded equipment and machinery yields unusual materials for both my textile work and for my screen printing designs.
Vintage and ‘found’ items also feature strongly in my pieces. I frequently use things out of their normal context, which gives the final work a theme beyond the obvious.

Ladybird and Friend – Rosemary Hufton

Shellfish Beds – Rosemary Hufton

Encore – Rosemary Hufton

Susie Grace

Recently, my work has been inspired by the abstract appearance of modern architecture that is to be found in cities around the globe. Not just the shape or line of the construction, but also the voids within.
After much experimentation I have found that a mixed media approach best helps me to convey an essence of this. My use of a limited colour palette enables me to keep the focus on the line and shape. Machine (and occasionally hand!!) stitching for emphasis, brings the whole piece together.
As line and shape forms the basis of all of my work, I am currently exploring the abstract shapes that are to be found in the geographical surface of the earth.

Defining the Void – Susie Grace

Defining the Void A2#1 – Susie Grace

Amanda Duke

Two themes form areas of continuous exploration for me; ‘Close By’ and ‘Further Away’.
‘Close By’ directs me down the paths of my own garden, local downland walks and woodlands. A year long residency at Sussex Prairie Garden, nr Henfield evoked what I expect to be a lifelong interest in very early botanical illustration, especially the ancient herbals. Investigating and experimenting with ways to record plant foliage and flora is an on-going process. I observe, collect, press, sketch, print, photograph and document the plants that interest me, especially those that I have grown, can eat or use to dye fabric. Natural dyeing and printing yields harmonious earthy colours and fascinating marks onto natural fibre fabrics and cotton rag paper. Using the collection of samples and experiments I move on to develop layered works on fabric and paper, assembling fragments to aesthetic arrangements. The paper works are refined with additional top layer drawings and collage elements and the fabric works are unified with hand or machine stitching. Outcomes feel complete when an archival quality is achieved, this relates back to my interest in the herbals, in particular works in de Materia Medica by the Greek Physician, pharmacologist and botanist Dioscorides.
‘Further Away’ is a series of works related to my excursions away from home. Whilst I prefer to live and work in the calm of a rural environment the chaos found in a city can also stimulate my ideas. Humans create an alternative discordant beauty in the built environment. Haphazard juxtapositions of old and new buildings. Graphic patterns made by repetitive windows on shiny slick skyscrapers, crumbling weathered peeling surfaces on dilapidated older buildings. Recent visits to Jaipur led me to record the impact of this particular city on my senses and memory. A series of fast paced paper collage works on different scales attempted to mirror the forces of nature battling with human intervention in the Pink City. I embraced the challenge to recreate the immediacy and energy of gestural marks using fibre reactive dyes in clashing discordant colour on fabric, then used my stash to arrange layered compositions adding free motion embroidery.
My next steps will involve me in more risk-taking approaches to hand and machine stitching. The ongoing quest to achieve fresh gestural, intuitive marks on fabric that capture the light, colour and texture of the urban environment is powerfully irresistible.
All the wood timbers I use come from fsc (Forest Stewardship Council) regulated forests so its as environmentally friendly as possible from harvesting timber to logistics (pefc) and (sfi) adopt the environmental standards at least equal to the legal requirements and to integrate the environmental considerations when handling the timber products from tree to plank.

Simply Abundant – Amanda Duke (side 2)

Simply Abundant – Amanda Duke

Faraway Jaipur Walls I – Amanda Duke

The group have exhibited extensively in the UK and Europe using Signature as an ongoing title for exhibitions which allows each artist to use their own visual language rather than be limited to fitting work to a title.

Learn more about Zero3 here