SPEAKERS
Lectures will take place in Studio 1 at First Site, a contemporary art gallery and space, a two-minute walk from the Minories. It is a ground-floor space with complete accessibility, with no roads to cross from The Minories. Limited disabled parking. See for updates at our Instagram account: @artcontex
Unpicking Threads: The life and work of artist Mary Beale (1633-1699) told through fibre, textiles and thread
Juliet Lockhart
Join me as we look at the story of the excellent Mrs Mary Beale and her extraordinary life during a chaotic period in history that encompassed the execution of a king, civil war, plague and fire. Find out how and why I have chosen to tell this story through stitched textiles.
Juliet is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and educator. I am currently a PhD candidate at the University of Suffolk in the Fine Art Department. The focus of my practice-led research is the life and work of seventeenth-century artist Mary Beale
Heavens' Embroidered Cloths
Helen M Stevens
Helen M. Stevens began her professional career when she opened her studio in 1981. Her pure silk embroidery has taken her to lecture and teach Masterclasses all over the world, and to exhibit in as diverse locales and epochal settings as The British Museum and Sydney Olympic Park, reflecting her work grounded in techniques dating from the Anglo Saxon world to her contemporary creations
EAST @ 30
Dr. Janette Bright & Susan Canfield
How exhibiting group EAST (East Anglian Stitch Textiles) was established and developed over a thirty-year period. It will look at some of the group's highlights and challenges as well as why for this group, research is an important aspect behind the production of art using fabric and thread.​
Photo credit: Farlie Photography
My textile discovery with nature
Nicola Whayman
A Free Lecture
A reflection of my 2 years of work looking at my natural resources and how I have used them in my textile work.
I am a textile artist who is inspired by my natural surroundings, using my senses and experience to create reflective pieces of work. Using local resources and pre-loved items as much as possible in response to and care for my environment.
Leaving, making and wearing: what we can learn about the 18th century through the textiles of an institution
Dr. Janette Bright
It is well known that at the London Foundling Hospital fabric and thread were used as personal identifiers or tokens. In this illustrated lecture we will learn about these but also about the importance of textiles as a form of vocational and moral education.​​
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​Janette has always enjoyed being creative, but it was in the 1990s when she became seriously involved in working with textiles. She studied C&G Creative Embroidery at Chelmsford before joining the exhibiting group EAST in 2003. It was researching to exhibit with that group that led her to an interest in the London Foundling Hospital at an academic level. Now she divides her time between historical research, working at London's Foundling Museum, teaching beadwork and exhibiting with EAST
Image Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org The Foundling Hospital, Holborn, London: a bird's-eye view of the courtyard, numbered for a key. Coloured engraving after L. P. Boitard, 1753. 1753 By: Louis-Pierre Boitardafter: Theodore JacobsenPublished.
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0
Writing with a Needle
Sara Impey
Sara will show examples of recent work and describe how she uses free-motion machine stitching to create lettering.
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Sara Impey is an internationally known textile artist. Her work is based on the techniques of quiltmaking and her speciality is stitching words. A former journalist, she writes the texts herself and uses the textile surface to comment on social, political or personal issues, sometimes with a dash of humour. She has worked in several national and international museum collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the International Quilt Museum in Nebraska and the American Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Sara comes from a farming family in Feering and lives in Coggeshall.
Talking with cloth
Barbara Burman
With regret, this talk has been cancelled. Please accept ArtConTex’s sincere apologies.
Zika and Lida Asher
Mary Schoeser FRSA
With regret, this talk has been cancelled. Please accept ArtConTex’s sincere apologies.