We are excited to be returning to Somerset House for the fifth year running to present the work of; Room W16.
Marice Cumber - Ceramics
Manya Goldman - Hand embroidery
Alice Kettle - Machine embroidery
YiMiao Shin - Hand embroidery
This year we introduce three new artists to the fair; YiMiao Shih who creates hand stitched textile based artworks presented in welded metal frames, a look at materiality and narrative, Manya Goldman who creates highly laboured exquisite miniature embroideries, Marice Cumber who hand builds pots that are physical, built responses to the emotions, complexities and uncertainties that she experiences, and has experienced and navigated, during her life and which have become part of her being.
YiMiao holds a MA in Visual Communication from Royal College of Art, where she is now a lecturer, and a BFA in Fine Art from National Taiwan Normal University. She works with domestic embroidery machines and hand stitching, creating contemporary ‘embroidery-drawing’, as part of her exploration in the field of expanded drawing. Her work often satirises contemporary culture and politics, as well as capturing the everyday mundane moments together with real-world observations of the nationalistic fervour, economic uncertainty and fragmentation of societal bonds.
Manya Goldman, who also studied at The Royal College, was born in South Africa. She came to London in the 1960’s with her family who were refugees from the Apartheid regime. This life experience informs her work which deals with memory, belonging, and dislocation. These necessarily small works, quietly evoke past selves and lost places. Manya embraces hand stitching as an essential way to explore these themes in a necessarily slow and painstaking way. Threads of memory bear witness to the testimony of family photographs, which are the starting point for her explorations.
Maric Cumber studied ceramics at evening classes at Morley Adult Education College (1984 - 1986) and has an MA (dist) in Social Entrepreneurship from Goldsmiths College, University of London (2018). The huge oversized ceramic cups, vessels and vases that Marice makes are confessional, bold and brave. They are highly decorated and are inscribed with her innermost thoughts and personal mantras that she communicates to herself and her audience through her work. These messages, like billboard advertisements, are taken from her personal diaries and notebooks and summarise moments of reflection, contemplation, encouragement and acceptance as she is observing herself going through life and commenting on who she is and what is within her.
Alice Kettle has made us a new series of work about magic, this is what she says about teh pieces; "All the works describe making magic, or the desire to make magic. Thread is the way that magic can be made, since in making with thread we make our own stories and truths. The works speak of longing, hope, desire. KingMakers and Star Catchers as a sequence are the most narrative. They ask, what do we believe in and how do we make what we believe in become real? Being a King is about having power, and we live at a time when there seem to be many Kings, good, bad and otherwise. Catching Stars is the same, we want to hold onto stardom. I am saying that we can create magic, we can shape our lives through thread, we can make Kings and catch stars."
