RUTH SINGER: TEXTILE TRACES
Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre, Cwmbran. Sat 25 May-Thurs 20 July
Ruth Singer is a textile artist creating detailed and intriguing textile artworks. Museum objects, personal heritage, memory and stories are just some of her influences. She uses natural and vintage textiles combined with hand-stitching and fabric manipulation to create her detailed surface texture. Above all, Singer is a storyteller; through her work she brings life to her own personal experiences as well as those experiences of the community around her, aiming to transmit these experiences into physical fabric. One particularly unique project of hers is the Criminal Quilts project, which aimed to create work inspired by photos of women who spent time in Stafford prison at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Textile Traces uses personal and emotive objects from everyday life, and highlights the traces they leave behind. It combines Singer’s previous work exploring human experience with thoughtful and emotional textile making. Her delicate work references loss, memory, fragility and damage displayed by both the physical cloth and the lives of the viewers. Singer works to create pieces contrasted with history and contemporary stories. The processes used to make these pieces honour the invisible traces of textile inheritance her grandmother left her, making this work personal yet relatable.
Admission: free. Info: 01633 483321 / www.lgac.org.uk
words Laura Wood