PRISM Textile Exhibition at The Art Pavilion - featuring Lynne Chapman

Last Friday I visited "Edgelands" on its opening day at at The Art Pavilion in Mile End Park, Clinton Road, E3 4QY. I was there because I've been following Lynne Chapman for years - and I very much wanted to see her dress "Ruby".

Lynne Chapman with "Ruby"
the dress she created which records the experience of having 
Aphantasia - which means being unable to have visual memories of events in her life

Edgelands is the 2024 Exhibition of Prism Textiles. 

Our international exhibiting group brings together a diverse group of selected textile artists showcasing high-quality fine art textile practice and craftsmanship from around the world. Exhibiting as a group since 1998, we currently have 70 artists participating within PRISM Textiles, working together to challenge the common misconceptions surrounding textiles as an art form.

 

You can find 

• details on venue, dates, hours and FREE workshops at the end of this post.
• details of the member artists who are exhibiting with Prism in the link to the website

The Edgelands exhibition comprises:

• work by international textile artists
• a commitment to push the boundaries of textile art
• use of a diverse range of materials and techniques
• showcases fine art textiles at a very level. 

It's certainly the best textile art exhibition I've ever been to.  I found aspects of it to be very positively 3D and sculptural. It left me wondering why more textile artists don't enter their work into more conventional art exhibitions which accept 3D artwork.

I've uploaded my pics of the exhibition to an album on Facebook 

- and you can see more about it there. See Edgelands by Prism Textiles

Lynne Chapman

I went to the exhibition only because I've known Lynne Chapman and followed her work for many years. (She also has past lives in Illustration (as a picture book illustrator) and Urban Sketching and specific websites for each of these. I initially encountered her work via the urban sketching). 

She now paints fabrics and draws with stitches and tells stories through textiles. 

It's been a real pleasure to watch online as she has transitioned into a "full on" textile artist and it was a very great pleasure to meet her for the very first time at the exhibition last Friday. 

The quality of her work is outstanding!

Here's a closeup of the dress "Ruby" - which I watched her make online. It records events in her life with her 20s on the bodice and the other decades around the skirt. This because the dress 

"Ruby looks at the dissociative experience of severe autobiographical memory-loss, through 40 yeras of largely forgotten life-events, utilising upcycled fabrics with forgotten past lives. The knots mourn the missing recall behind the headlines. Without routes into personal histories Aphantasics are often left feeling peripheral and disconnected."

I would never ever have guessed that Lynne has this side to her life - but it's a fantastic reason to make art about the experience and her life.

"My 50s" as a panel on the skirt of "Ruby" the dress

Lynne actually started off with a degree in Printed Textile Design so it's maybe no surprise she has such a fabulous understanding of what you can do with textiles. 

These are her three pieces in the exhibition

The next one is a stitched record of every day in January 2024 - and what Lynne did. Apparently a lot of people have been telling her she's got a more interesting life than them!

The words record what happened each day. On the back is a metaphor for what it feels like to try and recall those events.

January 2024 by Lynne Chapman
it records each day as a line with what she did that day stitched in to the fabric

the reverse of January 2024 - a metaphor for being unable to remember events

Details of the Exhibition

Venue: The Art Pavilion, Mile End Park, Clinton Road, E3 4QY

Dates: 19th - 29th April

Hours: 11.00 - 6.00 every day (closes 5pm on last day)

Workshops: free textile art workshops are also being held throughout the exhibition.

Textile artists in the Edgelands Exhibition

You may or may not be surprised to note that that textile art appears to be an almost universally a female activity!

• Jacqueline Adkins 
• Anne Amosford 
• Barbara Ash 
• Vivienne Beaumont 
• Ross Belton 
• Tansy Blaik-Kelly 
• Amanda Bloom 
• Anita Bruce 
• Sue Burley 
• Nerissa Cargill Thompson 
• Paulene Cattle 
• Niki Chandler 
• Lynne Chapman 
• Jeryl Church 
• Jo Coombes 
• Alex Duncan 
• Geraldine Festenstein 
• Anna Granberg 
• Wendy Greene 
• Anna Gunnarsdottir 
• Marilyn Hall 
• Catherine Hill 
• Amanda Hislop
• Jackie Hodgson 
• Aran Illingworth 
• Judith Issac-Lewis 
• Linda Izan 
• Marian Jazmik 
• Sabine Kaner 
• Masha Karda 
• Sharon Kearley 
• Caroline Kirton
• Willeke Klaassen 
• Jackie Langfeld 
• Maria Laughlin 
• Julieanne Long 
• Helen Macritchie 
• Penny Maltby 
• Kim McCormack 
• Hayley Mills-Styles 
• Marian Murphy 
• Helen O’Leary 
• Katharine Paton-King 
• Barbara Phelps 
• Sue Reddish
• Jane Riley 
• Judith Rowley 
• Consuelo Simpson 
• Jo Smith 
• Sally Spinks 
• Annie Taylor 
• Patti Taylor 
• Julie Turner 
• Catherina von Isenburg 
• Jill Walker 
• Maria Walker 
• Maria Wigley 
• Irena Willmott 
• Wolfgang Woerner