Saturday 30th October – Sunday 2nd January 2022
Monday – Sunday, 9am – 4pm
Artist gallery talk – Saturday 20th November, 2pm
Quay Arts OPEN 2019 winner Rachel Johnston presents a solo exhibition of large-scale woven pieces, objects and photographs, that explore our relationship with place and, in particular, the landscape and geology of the Isle of Wight.
All Rivers Run North, is an exhibition that explores the potential for textile process as a means of understanding the connection between making and the environment. Rachel Johnston’s work is rooted in the structures and symbolism of textile language. She makes objects – woven gloves and shoes – that are worn in specific environments, most often in water. These objects become manipulated and shaped through use to embody a lived ‘moment’ in which layers of memory and physical engagement with a landscape come together. This process then informs the construction of textural, large-scale woven pieces in a new representation of place.
In All Rivers Run North, the environment of the Isle of Wight becomes the focus, with pieces that reference to the island’s geology and biosphere status. The exhibition title describes a geological peculiarity in that all the main Isle of Wight rivers run northwards, a result of the shift that took place when the island separated from the mainland thousands of years ago. In new work parallels are drawn between the sequential building of a woven structure and the formation of a landscape through time. The seismic shifts and forces that have shaped the island’s landscape will find parallels in the twists and tensions of the yarn. The human scale of the artworks will provoke questions about the consequences of human activity on the island as well as the value of looking and looking again, to find new ways of engaging with this unique place.
#allriversrunnorth
West Gallery, Quay Arts Centre, Newport, Isle of Wight PO30 5BD
https://www.quayarts.org/event/all-rivers-run-north/