Common Threads Online
In March we were due to exhibit the Studio’s collection of embroideries at Autograph Gallery. Alongside the exhibition, we had lots more up our sleeve; talks, performances, food, photography and film. Although the this has been postponed for now, we’ve been working hard to bring the experience online.
First up is a showcase of our textile work. These works were inspired by photograph’s from Autograph’s collection.
In Charge - Sam Jevon
Effnik - Yinka Shonibare
Submit to Love Studios artist Sam Jevon created her textile work 'In Charge' for Common Threads. She was inspired by Yinka Shonibare’s self-portrait Effnik, commissioned by Autograph in 1996. Sam says “Art has played a big part in my positivity, people always say how good my drawings are and that makes me feel very good about myself...It was nice to do something different. I can use both of my hands, and I enjoyed trying to work out different patterns. It was nice to work with different materials and colours too, which I don’t normally do.”
Champion - Studio Collaboration
The Studio collaborated on 'Champion', inspired by a Victorian photograph of Peter Jackson taken by the London Stereoscopic Company in 1889. The original image, courtesy of Hulton Archive, a division of Getty images, is part of Autograph’s Exhibition in a Box The Missing Chapter: Black Chronicles.
Brian Searle
“I chose it because it reminds me of my past. The photo was taken in the 1870s but I updated it to the 1970s because that’s when I grew up, so I was juxtaposing it to mesh with my experience. The hairstyles, the clothing, the patterns, it’s all nostalgic.”
You can read more about the project here
More from Common Threads…
Photographer and friend of the Studio, Leon Foggitt has worked with us since 2016 after reading about Submit To Love in the press. He produced a series of stunning artist portraits to be exhibited alongside the embroideries at Autograph Gallery.
“Leon’s photographs were chosen for the exhibition not only because they are sensitive portraits, they also make visible artists who are frequently overlooked in galleries and art spaces. They help to broaden the picture of who is an artist.”
See more of Leon’s portraits here
Before the pandemic hit, Autograph gallery was exhibiting the work of Sharif Persaud, an artist who explores identity through his experience of contemporary life and autism.
In this first video, artist and writer Zara Joan Miller responds to a piece from Sharif’s exhibition. Zara has been a volunteer at Headway East London for the last 4 years.
“We are, many of us, in a self-contained annex, often with a phone in hand”
In this next video, Chris Miller, an artist at Submit To Love, responds to another piece from Sharif’s exhibition.
"In these times of coronavirus crisis, ordinary words like ‘hospitals, masks and sneezing’ have a meaning that they did not have just a few weeks ago.”