tf book 2 alice kettle

7/27/2019 TF Book 2 Alice Kettle

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Alice Kettle

Alice Kettle is a contemporary textile/fibre artist based in the UK. She has

established a unique area of practice by her use of a craft. She has

extended the possibilities of machine embroidery: producing works the

size of tapestries, exploiting the textures and effects made possible

through the harnessing of a mechanical process to intuitive and

creative ends.

My work evokes moments in our lives. It is of people and glimpses of

stories which mark themes in our very existence. Some are reminiscent

works which reference mythology and story telling, using the line of

thread to connect relationships and define emotions such as suffering,

hope and renewal.

The figures which inhabit the work explore relationships, as do the

threads, one placed next to or on top of another. The fabric and the

image held together by stitch, express the emotional connection, the

sense of touch, texture, and feelings, those emotive sensations which

textiles provoke and express within their fabric. Changes in direction in

the hatching and stitching add to the relationship with light touching

and settling on the surface.


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In covering areas of fabric right to the edge there is a slow building

up of back and forward free embroidery, the visual evidence of the

repetitive movement of the machine stitch. The stitched background

is drawn on the fabric; the tension in the thread pulls and distorts.

My head is full of pictures, sensations and stories forming andworked into its material. The threads are various in gauge and

type, sometimes thick and reflective otherwise matt and fine. Those

that are thicker are rolled around the bobbin and the fabric worked

upside down, often with the threads loosened to tuft and loop. The

stitching is often drawn blind from the back and the vastness of

fabric bunched in the arm of the machine. For me this is a liberating

act of drawing an unseen image in reverse and subsequently

responding. It is a process that can change and be reconstructed

and grow, so that the piece is often stitched over, cut up, patched

and stitched again. Various machines give variety of line and form.

It is also a process which reveals the sense of self and

identity. This work portrays emotional fragmentation,

the revealing of the inner self and the subsequent

reconstruction of persona. The face becomes a mask,

contorting and covering and joining the disparate parts

to face the outside world. The thread makes physical

and metaphorical connections between the touching,

sensory quality of textile and the expression of feelings.


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Alice Kettle,

Three Caryatids

1988-89

Machine Embroidery

Edgar Degas

Study of four dancers

Charcoal with coloured pastel on paper

Alice Kettle

Henry MooreReclining figure

Screen-printed linen

WhITworth LINKS shows how the works in TACTILE link to the

Whitworths collections that are either on current display or on

the Whitworths online collections database. Search the online

collections database and find other related works by using the

following words: portrait, tapestry, mythology

Access the online collections by going to:

http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/collection

tf book 2 alice kettle

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