Salon Talk at David Parr House, Cambridge
Day & time
Wednesday 25th September, 6.30 pm - 8.30 pm
Cost
£10 per person (£28 with signed book)
Venue
Visitor Centre of David Parr House
Join Rachael Matthews for an exclusive in-person talk on her new book the Rag Manifesto as part of the Salon Series of Talks at David Parr House.
Anyone who appreciates the David Parr House will take for granted the idea that lingering textiles are destined to turn into something else. This inherited valuing of material is common sense! But how common is it? The abundance of materials that pass through our local charity shops, or end up in landfill is unprecedented.This talk tells a story of traditional and contemporary ways of transforming rags. We will discuss the wide roots of rag work from British working-class homes, to the American settlers, English modernist painters, and commonplace crafts of India and Japan, to the re-purposing of textile waste by contemporary fashion and textile designers.
Rachael invites you to bring along problematic textiles which might have remained in their present form for too long! We will cherish your stories about the lives of these pieces. Revolution starts at home, and Rag Manifesto offers a 3 page pull-out bubble chart, helping us to think through the transformation of these materials while noticing new senses of self-reliance, deep thinking, and community.
I'm delighted to be exhibiting a sculpture in 'Non-Objectified' a show curated by Kathy Battista at Kino Saito in Up State New York. My piece is called 'Stoned Pink' Here is a hazy picture of it while I wait for the professional shots. The twenty other artists are listed in the image below and Kathy writes,
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'Non-Objectified presents a dynamic group of works by female artists operating under the umbrella of abstraction. The show’s title is a play on the term ‘non-objective’ painting, coined by by Alexander Rodchenko in 1918. This movement was centered in Europe and created in reaction to centuries of figurative representation, as practiced and espoused in the academies. Non-Objectified is a riff on Rodchenko’s term, a double entendre exploring female artists’ resistance to the objectification of bodies. The show takes the form of a dialogue between works by a cross-generational, international group of artists selected for their varying approaches to abstraction, each variation invoking or involving the body in subtle ways.
Rag School at East London Textile Arts is offering a FREE course to the residents of London Borough of Newham over the next year, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. We make glorious things out of textile waste, working both individually and as a community. No previous experience is necessary and we would love to hear any stories you have about how textile waste was used in your culture, and how we might pass on those skills. Our course includes weaving, prodding, chord making, fringe making kantha stitching, and other things which we invent which have name yet! More information is held on the East London Textile Arts website.
Here is a little film of the conveyer belt at the Salvation Army TextileWaste sorting depot in Kettering. Every day they take in between 150 - 190 tons of textile waste. The next day the same thing happens and this is just one sorting depot.
There is a lot to say and do about this. The Salvation Army have a huge heart and are developing Britain's first Polyester recycling factory.