ALICE KETTLE, Threads, Winchester Discovery Centre, Jewry Street, SO23 8SB
28 Oct to 14 Jan
ALICE KETTLE, More Threads, Candida Stevens Gallery, Chichester, PO19 1BA
11 Nov to 2 Dec
This November 10 significant pieces by Alice Kettle can be seen in her hometown at the Winchester Discovery Centre in Alice Kettle: Threads. The exhibition marks the 10 year anniversary since it first commissioned her to create her public art work, Looking Forward to the Past (2007). Here, she also previews Sea, the first of a new body of work called Thread Bearing Witness, which sees Kettle working in partnership with refugees, including displaced women artists, to create a new series of her renowned monumental textiles. The full body of work is currently in creation, and is due to be exhibited at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester next year.
To complement this mini-retrospective, Alice Kettle: More Threads will be held simultaneously at Candida Stevens Gallery, Chichester. Here visitors can view previously unseen and recently created work, including Sunbathers (2017), made by Alice for GOOD NATURE, at the gallery earlier this year, two pieces from her Schiffili series, made in 2006 on machines that no longer exist, two of her three dimensional heads for which she is widely recognised and her iconic piece Hermes and the Lotus Eaters, 2003.
While she trained as a painter, Kettle has been lauded by her contemporaries for “her use of a craft medium, consistently and on an unparalleled scale.” With curator Sara Roberts stating “The scale of her work belies their component parts: individual tiny stitches, which combine to form great swathes of colour, painterly backgrounds incorporating rich hues and metallic sheen.”
To celebrate Kettle’s important creative success and unique practice, the gallery has produced a new publication Alice Kettle, Threads & More Threads. It features critical writing by 12 contributors, with observations and comments on her work, approach and ideas.
