Having trained in fine arts before choosing textiles as her medium, artist Alice Kettle captivates the viewer with her artworks, large-scale narrative ‘paintings’ rendered in fabric and stitch, which offer texture, depth and movement exploring themes including memory and traditional craft practices.
Regularly commissioned by major organisations, Kettle has previously exhibited at the Somerset Rural Life Museum and is working on a collaborative project, ‘The Somerset Almanac’, with artists at the Centre For Print Research (CFPR) at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, to explore and express personal experiences with local landscapes and their wider impact.
'From my studio I overlook the Mendip Hills with the wind-blown open skies of changing clouds, huge kites circling, and crows alarmed by the blasting quarry. I swim each day in another quarry,' explains Kettle. 'These things are in what I make, not always obvious, but part of my closeness to the shifts of light and moods of where I live and work.'
This summer Kettle is co-curating a major exhibition at the Arnolfini gallery on Bristol’s harbourside featuring 21 contemporary international artists. A celebration of material and making, it highlights the power of textiles to weave compelling stories drawing on history while speaking to modern audiences.
Threads: Breathing stories into materials will run at Arnolfini until October 1. Alice Kettle will also be revealing insights into her practice on September 27 as part of the ‘Art of the Maker’ series of talks, a collaboration between Arnolfini and The School of Art & Design and the CFPR at UWE.
