Inhabit

Brunel Broderers will be exhibiting at The Lansdown Hall and Gallery, Stroud, Gloscestershire, from Wednesday 8th to Sunday 19th September under the title Inhabit. Each member will be showing a new body of work.

Members have each adopted their own approach. For some, the word inhabit may suggest the living in or physical occupation of place. For others, it may evoke ideas around reflection or memory relating to place. 

Linda Babb has been attracted for many years to the architecture and art of the Middle East and Morocco in particular. Work for this exhibition continues this fascination through the exploration of pattern, design and symmetry in buildings. 

Liz Harding's work has for some years been focussed on Down Ampney, the Gloucestershire village where she lives. Through walks and sketchbooks, she has amassed a large collection of mental images of place. Throughout lockdown and while waiting for surgery which made moving about difficult, she has continued her walks in her head and made a stitch archive of what she has seen. 

Carla Mines has made a thinging cap because thinking allows humans to make sense of the world we inhabit. Her work focuses especially on the effects of our habitation through the plastic waste we throw away in our environment. 

Margaret Robbie's textile work has often developed out of overseas travel. For this exhibition, the physical form of modern architecture with its high-rise buildings has provided rich scope for the development of abstract digital imagery. Her work considers the damage and disruption that can occur when modern development in large cities proceeds unchecked.  

Carolyn Sibald's work is based on an old farmer's smock and a box of documents from the Somerset farm inhabited by her family for many generations. The worn surface of the smock is loaded with meaning and the stories of life lived and she is adding to it by hand stitching her history into the surface. 

We will be stewarding every day throughout this varied exhibition and we hope to welcome those who are close enough to come. 

Corinne Renow-Clarke

 Corinne has now left the group and we wish her well for the future.

The latest from Linda

 Last Friday we saw Linda's latest work and admired the subtle colour scheme

Stitching the smock

Stitching onto the smock ... 

I’m finding the back of the stitching as interesting as the front.

Carolyn Sibbald

The Lingering Brain

As shown by neurological research, the capacity to create images in our minds is essential for human learning and wellbeing.

I am showing our brain lingering at the threshold, through which text and image are inextricably linked.

Carla Mines

Small Weavings

I've been dyeing yarns and then weaving on a variety of small looms recently. 

First of all is a landscape triptych completed on a tapestry frame ...

Then here is a strip of little woven landscapes created on a tiny fixed heddle loom. The warp is only 2" wide and the whole loom measures only 3"x 5.5". Apart from the bottom piece, the rest all use hand dyed threads done over the past 2-3 months. Now it might be time for some more dyeing sessions to see if I can get a wider range of colours. 

This time, I'rying out some new cotton yarns on the tiny fixed heddle loom to see how they might go together. Next I may try a more balanced weave to see how that goes. 

Last of all, these black & grey two heddle weaving patterns were done on a slightly larger heddle loom I bought recently. I'm trying out weaving patterns from an old Dryad booklet from 1971. This was quite fun to do but the cheap yarn used for the samples was a beast to warp up.

Corinne Renow-Clarke

Stitching on a smock

Transferring information onto the smock and starting to stitch the history of my family living at the farm. My grandparents moved there as tenants in 1906.

Carolyn Sibbald

Take a Stitch for a Walk

 My work for the next exhibition takes the form of a Museum Box in which is archived a roll of cloth and a series of sketchbooks. These are the small pocket sized books that I have been taking with me when I walk around the village.

 I also fashioned a narrow strip of cloth, about 200 yards long which I took, began to stich and photographed during the walk. This was never finished but now I am using the cloth with text and images from the sketchbooks to tell the story of my walks

Liz Harding

Hexagonal form

I'm currently working on a 3D structure to explore elements of high rise buildings and their reflections. It will be hexagonal in form with cutouts and look-throughs. Samples of progress so far are shown here. 

 More photos and comments can be found on my blog here.  

Margaret Robbie

Moroccan doorways

Some ideas for our next exhibition Inhabit - more stitched and dyed doorways I've observed and delighted in during my many visits to Morocco.

Linda Babb

High rise images

I've been working further on an image posted last year at the very beginning of explorations for Inhabit, the Brunel Broderers' exhibition in Stroud later this year. During a visit to Sydney, Australia, a few years ago, I saw and photographed this striking high rise building just behind Darling Harbour as I passed by on the top deck of a bus.

Despite a relatively fleeting impression, this image has remained with me and is providing endless hours of visual challenge as I investigate the structure, reflections and colour within. Some recent manipulations are shown here. 

When I work in this way, changing colour, selecting, cutting and pasting, and then overlaying small sections of the original to make a new whole, it always surprises me just how far removed from the original image I become as I try to represent a story. It is what fascinates me in the process. 

These images are no exception - but I doubt they will be the final end point.

Margaret Robbie

 

A family smock

As I work towards Inhabit*, the Brunel Broderers' exhibition now sheduled for later this year, I have been adding a great deal of new stitching to a smock which dates from when my family farmed in Somerset, certainly as far back as the mid-1800s and maybe further back still. 

The work on the smock tells the story of the farm, its history and that of the members of my family who lived and worked there. Further details can be found in previous posts here, here and here. 

The smock needed a great deal of repair as the linen was quite damaged and was worn very thin in places. Before stitching onto it, I basted a lining into it to add strength. I have mainly used a fine silk to add as little weight as possible.

* Inhabit will be on view in the Landsdown Galleries in Stroud from 7th to 20th September 2021, Covid restrictions willing.

Carolyn Sibbald