Book & Exhibition Launch: Tuesday 8 September: 6-8PM
Stitching Connection, a Workshop: Saturday 12 September - 12-5pm
(Max 15 attendees)
Cost per person: £150 (to book, please contact gallery@batsfordbooks.com
About the exhibition:
This exhibition brings together a selection of Claire Wellesley-Smith's recent textile works, offering a rare opportunity to experience these richly detailed pieces in person. Many of the artworks featured are reproduced in her latest publication, Reflective Stitch (Batsford Books), but seeing them at full scale reveals the subtle textures, intricate hand stitching and material presence that are central to her practice.
Working across textile art, research and community collaboration, Wellesley-Smith explores the interconnected themes of time and place. Her work reflects on industrial and rural landscapes, histories of making, belonging and displacement, and the slow, meditative process of stitching as both a creative and reflective act. Through cloth and thread, she considers how textiles record memory, connect people and places, and hold the stories of everyday lives.
The exhibition invites visitors to look closely at the physicality of stitch and the narratives embedded within each work. It offers an opportunity to encounter textiles not simply as objects, but as vessels of memory, care and connection, revealing how making by hand can become a way of marking time, understanding place and reflecting on our shared human experience.
About the workshop: Stitching Connection
This hand stitching workshop explores textile as a daily practice through Claire's Stitch Journal (2013-2023) and other durational work. You will make a series of textile samples and have the opportunity to discuss textile making as a tool for community and individual wellbeing.
Claire's new book for Batsford, 'Reflective Stitch: Time and Place in Textile Art' will be available to purchase at the workshop.
Materials are provided, but you are welcome to bring threads and small scraps of fabric that hold meaning for you to include in your work. Please bring a simple sewing kit including scissors and a pincushion.
Image by Carolyn Mendelsohn
