INSPIRATIONAL 20: Released!

Inspirational 20 is now released for instant download and instant access. Pick up a copy at: https://payhip.com/b/OX4M

Over 100 pages in interviews and imagery from contemporary artists around the globe - from textiles to collage, from painting to photography.

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Inspirational...celebrating creativity

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INSPIRATIONAL 17: Now on Sale

Welcome to the 17th issue of Inspirational magazine. In this issue inspirational features interviews with four new artists, as well as one previous featured artist with new work, a community article, a project article, a book review, and events pages highlighting exhibitions and art events from around the world.

Feature artist: Akiko Suzuki is the internationally renowned Japanese textile/fiber artist. She has worked in a range of disciplines and collaborated creatively and highly successfully with fellow creative artists on an international stage. Akiko gives an in-depth interview and shows a range of her work in this Inspirational feature.  

      

Feature artist: Amy Oliver is a profound British conceptual artist that works with her own experiences regarding among other subjects – mental health, women’s rights, abuse and identity. Amy gives an in-depth interview and shows a range of her work in this Inspirational feature.    

           

Feature artist: Emanuela Cau is an Italian photographic artist who produces the most extraordinary emotional, theatrical, magical work, rich in texture and meaning. Emanuela gives an in-depth interview and shows a range of her work in this Inspirational feature.      

 

Feature artist: Leonard Greco Jr is an American painter and textile artist. Leonard is one of those rare artists, one that has an acute sense of history, sense of spirit, sense of wonder, sense of epic and intimate. Leonard gives an in-depth interview and shows a range of his work in this Inspirational feature.   

    

New work: The British textile artist Stewart Kelly was originally featured in Inspirational 8. Nine issues on Stewart is again being featured, he gives an in-depth interview, and we see what he has been up to since first being featured in Inspirational, showing a range of his work in this Inspirational feature.       

Community: PEG (Profanity Embroidery Group) is a British textile/fiber community, one that meets regularly to embroider profane statements, but they are so much more. PEG is a community that supports, shares and genuinely engages with its members. Members of PEG are interviewed and they show a range of work produced by PEG in this Inspirational feature.     

  

Project: World Wide Weave 2018 is a project organised by British textile/fiber artist Maria Clarke-Wilson. It is a planetary wide project that involves eco dyeing of fiber by artists around the globe, and then the pulling together of the results by Maria so that she can freestyle weave a unified result. Maria gives an in-depth interview about this planetary project for this Inspirational feature.   

    

Review: Points of Juncture is a book about an exhibition. Points of Juncture was a ground-breaking exhibition held at the Forty Hall Estate, London in 2017 by the textile/fiber artist Cos Ahmet. It proved so successful that a book has just been published by Forty Hall Estate and the Arts Council England in celebration. Cos gives an in-depth interview and shows a range of his work for the Points of Juncture exhibition in this Inspirational feature.     

  

Events: pages that are global in nature. All continents are covered, highlighting a range of art events and opportunities across the planet.

It’s a full and varied selection of contemporary talent for this issue of Inspirational. Please enjoy.

Inspirational 17 is an interactive downloadable contemporary art magazine, which can be purchased for instant download from the following link: https://payhip.com/b/BsR4

INSPIRATIONAL 16: Now on Sale

Welcome to the 16^th issue of Inspirational magazine. In this issue inspirational features interviews with four new artists, one previous featured artist with new work, a talent spot artist, a book review, and events pages highlighting exhibitions and art events from around the world.

Aline Brant is a Brazilian-based artist that produces embellished and embroidered work over and through photographs, connecting the figures in the photographs to a larger, expansive reality, one that rejoices in colour and nature.

Debra Fritts is a US-based sculptor that produces amazingly haunting figurative work, images that are part of narratives that are magical, otherworldly, but at the same time rooted in our own experiences.

Rita Summers is an Australian-based artist, designer and passionate eco dyer, and upcycler. Her work in awareness of who we are, where we are, and the impact our lives have on everything and everyone around us is an example of how creativity can help change attitudes and perspectives towards a better world.

Sahaya Sharma is an Indian-based abstract artist that works with dynamic colour, with energy, with music, with self. An amazing expression of the artist as experimenter and as experiencer.

Terry Jarrard-Dimond, the US-based abstract artist was originally featured in Inspirational 6. Ten issues on Terry is again being featured with both an interview and a whole range of new work.

Tom Abbiss Smith is a UK-based artist that produces bold, colourful imagery that is based on digital collage, printmaking and painting. Tom is the first artist to be featured in the new regular ‘Talent’ spot in the magazine.

Mark Sheeky, the UK-based artist, writer, musician, and presenter has just published 21st Century Surrealism and Inspirational is lucky enough to be able to feature the book in its new ‘Review’ section, which will become a regular feature in the magazine from this issue onward.

The ‘Events’ pages are full and highlight a range of art events and opportunities across the planet.

Inspirational 16 is an interactive downloadable contemporary art magazine, which can be purchased for instant download from the following link: https://payhip.com/b/084G

Inspirational - is an interactive downloadable contemporary art magazine, which now has a dedicated site for all news regarding the magazine: https://inspirational-magazine.blogspot.co.uk/

10 YEARS

10 years online.
350+ contemporary artists featured.
15 reference books written
15 issues of an art magazine produced.
40 art magazine and book articles written.
International jurying.
A wealth of exhibition and book reviews.
From The Textile Blog to Inspirational and beyond ...inspiring creativity.
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Love Thy Denim Exhibition

Ian Berry: Journey Home, 2013. Photo credit: courtesy of the artist ianberry.org

From workwear to haute couture, historical to contemporary, rebellion to endeavour, a new exhibition opening this August, Love Thy Denim, celebrates the many faces of our beloved denim.

This exciting and impressive fashion exhibition will explore the origins and versatility of denim, from its workwear heritage in the Wild West right through to its adoption into mainstream fashion and becoming the fabric of our everyday lives.

There will be many key pieces on display, including a jacket and trousers from Vivienne Westwood’s 1991 Cut, Slash and Pull collection, the first time that this ensemble has been out on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A). Among the other exhibition highlights are a Jean Paul Gaultier men’s ensemble on loan from the Fashion Museum Bath, a piece from Maison Margiela’s SS2009 Artisanal Collection, exhibits from British denim revivalists Blackhorse Lane Ateliers and nineteenth century denim artefacts dug up from US silver mines.

Jean Paul Gaultier: Denim ensemble, c1990s. Photo credit: Fashion Museum, Bath

Also on display will be the ISKO Commission, a spectacular dress made from different shades of denim supplied by the exhibition’s partner ISKO™, global leader in denim manufacturing and textile innovation. Designed by Kylie Crompton-Malcolm of Monday I’m In Love and created in collaboration with pattern cutter Russell Wharton, the concept behind the ISKO Commission is to show the versatility and beauty of denim.

The emphasis is not just on fashion and clothing. Alongside will appear iconic denim advertising images, denim accessories including sunglasses and even denim art made from the world’s favourite cloth.

Maison Margiela Denim Ensemble, SS2009 Artisanal Collection. Photo credit: Jacques Habbah

“We are so excited to have such an extraordinary and eclectic variety of pieces to show at what promises to be a thrilling exhibition,” said Janet Owen, Chief Executive at Hampshire Cultural Trust, organiser of Love Thy Denim.

“To have pieces as varied as 19^th century denim from US silver mines, to a jacket by Hannah Jinkins, winner of the 2016 H&M New Designer Award, is an incredible privilege, and a great celebration of this simple cloth which has made such a huge impact on our society.”

Love Thy Denim opens in The Gallery, Winchester Discovery Centre on Saturday 27 August, and runs until Sunday 23 October. It then opens at the Gallery @ Gosport Discovery Centre on Saturday 29 October. Admission to both venues is free of charge, donations are welcome.

Hannah Jinkins: Denim jacket, AW 2015. Photo credit: Prexa Shrestha

About Hampshire Cultural Trust

Hampshire Cultural Trust operates and funds Hampshire’s and Winchester’s council-owned museums, galleries and arts centres. The trust proudly champions world-class culture and exists to showcase, connect and empower Hampshire’s creative economy.

The independent charity works collaboratively to bring organisations, people and ideas together for greater impact, with customer focus at its core. To find out more and for a full list of attractions operated by Hampshire Cultural Trust visit www.hampshireculturaltrust.org.uk

About Isko

ISKO™ is a company of SANKO holding and the world’s largest denim manufacturer under one roof: production capacity of 250 million metres of fabric each year in a 300,000 m² factory. With a wide range of innovative fabric technologies and products that meet the most diverse demands of the denim sector, ISKO™ is geared towards the market’s high end. ISKO™ operates in 60 international locations and has secured many patents and trademarks to protect the value of its innovations. Its environmentally-friendly approach is being certified by authoritative institutions and ISKO™ has also become the only denim mill globally to receive Nordic Swan Ecolabel with ISKO EARTH FIT™ platform.

To find out more about ISKO™, please visit www.iskodenim.com

Hampshire Cultural Trust would like to thank the supporters of Love Thy Denim:

Hampshire County Council

Winchester City Council

Gosport Borough Council

Arts Council England

The Henry Hussey Reliquaries Exhibition

Henry Hussey: Betrayal

Henry Hussey: Solidarity

British textile artist Henry Hussey works with actress Maxine Peak to inspire Reliquaries 

Henry Hussey’s solo show Reliquaries opens at Gallery 8 in London on Monday 12 July 2016. 

Hussey’s work for Reliquaries is drawn from three key inspirations from the artist’s life. His relationship with his father, death and memory, and a growing political awareness. Within the overall works of Reliquaries, there are two other bodies of work, The Last Breath and Locking Horns.

Hussey describes the making of such artworks as cathartic in that they deal directly and honestly with the complexities of his familial relationships.  Hussey found out that his father had two families, neither of whom knew of each other, and the anger arising from this informed his work to date.  This inspired the body of work Locking Horns.

Henry Hussey: Expulsion

Now the artist has chosen to move on from the catalyst of this anger towards his father and the work in Reliquaries, also addresses the concept of memory and death, and the idea of a fractured, divided England.

Using actors to create live performances of the work Hussey envisions and feed his inspiration.  Most notably, the performances for The Last Breath were enacted by renowned actress Maxine Peake. The sessions with Peake allowed Hussey to capture genuine responses to emotion through drawing, photography and audio recording, paying careful attention to the responses of the face and body to specific emotional intensities. 

Hussey says of Peake “The pathos she can convey is incredible. Maxine not only embodies the spirit of the work, but working with her inspired me to develop new areas of work and inspiration. The growing political comment in some of the works arose directly from our partnership.”

Henry Hussey: Jerusalem

Death and memory play a large part in Hussey’s ‘Reliquaries’ series. Rooted in the artist’s personal history, the artworks explore the ways that memories of a person are fragmented and composite – pieces of a life that are assembled in hindsight. Materials are significant within everything Hussey makes but perhaps none more so than in ‘Reliquaries’, in their allusions to Victorian mourning clothing, jewellery and domestic interior preparation by way of respect and remembrance.

The series of work Locking Horns explores what Hussey describes as his anger toward his father. Using diary-like sections of stitched text that leave no room for misunderstanding in tandem with striking, sometimes quite violent images, pieces such as ‘Eclipse’ and ‘Betrayal’ are powerful and intimate slices of a relationship that speak of power, control and usurpation. 

Another series also titled ‘Reliquaries’, meanwhile, uncovers aspects of death and memory. Again rooted in the artist’s personal history, the artworks explore the ways that memories of a person are fragmented and composite – pieces of a life that are assembled in hindsight. 

Henry Hussey: The North

Working with a range of traditional and contemporary processes such as embroidery and digital printing, his textile-based artworks utilise these materials as emotionally expressive tools. Materials are significant within everything Hussey makes but perhaps none more so than in ‘Reliquaries’, in their allusions to Victorian mourning clothing, jewellery and domestic interior preparation by way of respect and remembrance.

Henry Hussey completed a BA (Hons) at Chelsea College of Art, 2011, followed by an MA in Textiles at the Royal College of Art, 2013. Hussey has exhibited in Hong Kong and nationally in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition, 2014, and the Royal Academy Summer Show, 2014. The artist is based in Surrey, UK. Henry Hussey is represented by Coates and Scarry, curators of internationally ground-breaking shows and exhibit at Art Context Miami and New York.

Reliquaries is presented by Coates and Scarry at Gallery 8, 8 Duke Street St James, London, 12-30 July 2016.

Text supplied by Damson Communications

More of Henry's work can be found at his website: www.henryhussey.co.uk

Henry Hussey

Textile Nature by Anne Kelly

Plants, flowers, gardens, insects and birds are a rich source of inspiration for artists and designers of all kinds. This beautiful guide demonstrates how to get the most out of your surroundings to create original and unique pieces in textiles.

Beginning with a chapter on drawing from nature, the book demonstrates how to use sketchbooks and create mood boards to explore your local environment and landscape. The author demonstrates how to make small pieces such as folding books based on observational drawing and stitch. Moving on to a section on floral inspiration, the author shows how to use plants and flowers in your work, from using stencilled flower motifs as embellishment to printing with plants onto fabric and making simple relief prints. Finally, the Taking Flight chapter demonstrates how to move into three-dimensions and sculptural work with birds and insects made from cloth.

Featuring step-by-step projects as well as work from contemporary artists, makers and collaborative groups throughout, this practical and beautiful guide shows how practitioners of all kinds can draw from the natural world for making and inspiration.

At 128 pages, and stacked with full colour photos of work by such artists as: Meredith Woolnough, Cas Holmes, Carol Naylor, Kim Thittichai, Alice Fox, Hillary Fayle, and many more, this is a great book for anyone who has an interest in connecting nature with textiles, and would be a great source book and constant reference guide for any textile artists library.

Textile Nature, along with Anne's previous book in collaboration with Cas Holmes Connected Cloth: Creating Collaborative Textile Projects, can both be bought on Amazon, as well as other reputable outlets. 

Anne Kelly is a textile artist and tutor. She trained in Canada and the UK and now teaches and speaks to guilds and groups. Her work is exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions, including private collections in the UK and abroad, the Vatican Collection in Rome and at the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto. She was recently artist-in-residence at Sussex Prairies Garden in West Sussex and exhibited at the international World of Threads Festival and the Prague Patchwork Meeting. She is the co-author of Connected Cloth, also published by Batsford.

Sheree Dornan - Living Art

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) digital print cascade dress

It is always wonderful when art takes a broad stroke, when it transfers itself from one designation to another, one discipline to another, one world view to another. To connect art to a place that seems to others to be outside of itself, outside its natural remit, is to really understand art, to understand its central purpose in our lives.

Art is not there to be rarified, to be part of an ever accumulating collection, something to be passed on to future generations to maintain and then pass on again. Art is there to be lived, to be part of the now, it is there to be wrapped around the psyche, to be part of the everyday as much as it is of the special. Which is why art and design connections are particularly special.

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) digital print on silk

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) digital print on silk

From fine to design doesn't always work of course, there have been many disasters, many half attempts, many ill-considered ones as well. Often, art was stuck on top of a discipline, as if it were merely a form of signature from a particular artist, that it would somehow give cache to the discipline it was attempting to attach itself to. However, when it works well, when the connection is focused, sympathetic, and understood, then it works exceedingly well. 

The artist and designer Sheree Dornan has certainly succeeded in connecting and combining art and costume. Her beautiful works are so effortlessly interchangeable between fine art on a wall, and fine art on a body. This is no mere decoration of a garment, but is in fact an art piece draped upon a living person.

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) digital print, detail

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) digital print, detail

With minimal cutting and no waste Sheree is able to provide elegance and flow to her work. Garments appear to move as if the body that wears them is still part of the artwork, which in many ways they are. To wear a costume by Sheree is very much wearing a piece of artwork by Sheree, the two are connected so organically, that the space between one and the other cannot be seen.

Boro(d) is the name Sheree gives to her featured work. She cleverly uses the borrowed word  and technique of boro, and places it within the larger context of Boro(d), and although indeed borrowed, Sheree has made this technique and process her own.

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) digital print, detail

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) digital print, detail

Boro is derived from the Japanese term meaning something that is tattered and/or repaired. It is a word and definition that has many explanations, and many particular and conceptual meanings depending on who you are, and how you want to see it. But it is about the continuation of a piece of cloth, one that is maintained and added to over the years, allowing the integrity of the piece to remain even as it is modified and added to throughout its history, rather like maintaining a family quilt through constant repair.

Sheree produces her borrowed concept of the boro, her boro(d), using a working process that focuses on specialised digital printing techniques onto selected silk base cloths, producing limited edition runs of each print design. 

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) hand dyed, hand stitched panel

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) hand dyed, hand stitched panels

She uses mostly rectangular pieces that can be either made into fine art hangings, or suspended, or draped wall panels, or they can be formed into garments by draping them onto a mannequin with minimal cutting and no waste. Each garment becomes, but its very existence and making journey, an individual piece, with no other copy, no short or long runs, just the individual piece in its entirety.

Hand editing is done on each piece with embellishing techniques such as stitching and beading. The hand editing is applied to both the fine art wall panels as it is to the fine art garments, in many ways making it even more apparent that the creative techniques and process is the guiding line between fine art and costume, so that art becomes costume, and costume becomes art. 

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) installation fashion forms exhibition

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) mixed media on canvas

This is the defining point in Sheree's work, that combination of art and design, of wearing a garment that has been part of the process of fine art, because it is fine art. Being closely connected to an artwork is always a difficult process for many, but to be mesmerised by wearing a piece of fine art work, to be integral to the canvas, it couldn't get much better than that.

More of Sheree's work can be found at her website: www.shereedornan.com and www.blockdstudios.com.au

Sheree can also be found on social media: twitter, facebook, instagram

She is also one of 35 artists featured in the book Textile Visionaries: Innovation and Sustainability in Textile Design by Bradley Quinn

Please be aware that all of the imagery provided for this article, was indeed provided by Sheree. If you want to reproduce any of the images of her work, please ask her first. Thanks!

Sheree Dornan: Boro(d) panel detail with digital print boro patches

Claire Louise Mather - Nature and Textiles

Claire Louise Mather: Springtime, detail

Textile artists and nature so often seem to go hand in hand. It is not always the case that textile artists have nature as their primary inspiration, but more often than not you will find the connection there, it is a connection of intent. 

There is something about the physicality of textile work that seems to draw artists time and again to the natural world as canvas. Sky, earth, ocean, and all the permutations between, have fascinated and continue to fascinate textile artists. 

There are so many interpretations and projections of the natural world, all of which are valid, intriguing, adding always to the burgeoning vocabulary that is contemporary textile art.

Claire Louise Mather

Claire Louise Mather: Memories of March

One of those contemporary textile artists who have the natural world as a central pillar to their creativity, is Claire Louise Mather. Claire uses a combination of photography, collage, and textiles in her work in order to reflect on her own observations of nature. 

She is intrigued by all aspects of the natural environment, from the slow cycle of seasons, the constantly changing weather patterns, the slow grinding down of surfaces, all are part of the environment that she wishes to be part of, and in taking part, to also project back through her work, and out into the world of the viewer.

Claire Louise Mather: April Dawn

Claire often visits and revisits familiar spots in the environment in order to record and enjoy the changes that so often go unnoticed in the natural world. It is these changes that in many respects show us that we are alive, show us that movements are always cyclical, that birth is part of decay, and decay is part of rebirth.

This is an artist that has photography as an integral part of her initial work. She uses the camera as an ongoing sketchbook, detailing experiences of surfaces, textures, landscapes both large and small, all of the details that go eventually to make up her compositions.

Claire herself says that her work is "an exploration of drawing with stitch," one of constant experiencing of surfaces and textures. Texture, colour, and pattern are always visible in the artists work, and it is a combination that has no real end as each new composition is a new exploration, a new discovery of an always changing landscape. And that of course has to be the most exciting in its appeal to the artist, a landscape that both unfolds and renews within a constant cycle, giving an endless scenario of change and familiarity. 

Claire Louise Mather

Claire Louise Mather: Yorkshire, detail

With that in mind, enjoy the work of Claire as she both works through her fascination with, and intrigue over, the natural environments that she so effortlessly makes her own.

More of Claire's work can be found at her comprehensive website: http://www.sewsaddleworth.com/

All of the imagery of Claire's work shown in this article were generously supplied by the artist. If you want to use the imagery elsewhere please ask her before doing so. Thanks.

Claire Louise Mather: View From Long Lane