Sinead Smith

UnFold at HAF: a place for creativity and friendship

This August, a group of local artists from the textile group unFOLD, will present the culmination of two years’ work. Initially inspired by their individual and diverse experiences of lockdown, the loss of their founder member Christine Chester from cancer in June 2023, brought a new meaning to this work as a reminder of the power of creativity to heal and unite in the face of adversity. Erica Smith looks forward to the show opening next week at Hastings Arts Forum.

Whilst the excellent Textile Junction 2 art show has just closed at Electro Studios Project Space, another exciting art exhibition using the medium of textiles and stitching is soon to open at Hastings Arts Forum.

Sarah Welsby

Each artist has responded to the theme of ‘Raft: A Place of Safety and Survival’ through her preferred creative approach. For Carly Ralph from St Leonards, proximity to the sea provided “calm reflection, drama and distraction” during a time of lockdown and confinement. Her work, the ‘Sea is my Raft’ echoes this sentiment through mixed media textiles. For Sarah Welsby, based in Eastbourne, a combination of paint, folding, sanding, stitch, and collage offered an opportunity to test the elasticity of discarded packaging, a personal metaphor for resilience. Christina Ellcock, also from Eastbourne, was inspired by the contrast between the outside world and the shelter and protection provided by home. Her textured pieces bring atmosphere and meaning through a limited colourway and carefully considered compositions.

Vanessa Marr

Home life is also a theme in Vanessa Marr’s work, which explores domestic spaces such as kitchen tables, as metaphorical rafts where family dramas are played out time and time again. Her illustrative and poetic response revolves around a tablecloth cloth featuring the words ‘All these storms, lay heavy on my heart’; an echo back to the sea explored by Carly Ralph.

Sinéad Smith’s contribution is a celebration of friendship, bound into two quilts, one “big, bold, and bright,” created from fabric dyed over years of living in the States, the Middle East, and the UK. The other, constructed from tea towels donated by friends and overdyed in indigo, is a symbol of “the foundation upon which I stand.”

The late Christine Chester’s work, started but never completed, will also be on display. Collectively, this work has soothed and inspired, challenged and comforted its makers, as a tangible reminder of the power of friendship to bring women together.

The work by the unFOLD group on the theme of ‘Raft’ will be exhibited at the Hastings Arts Forum gallery from Tuesday 6 August to Sunday 18 August (closed Mondays). All are welcome to the ‘private view’ from 6-8pm on Friday 9 August. There is an opportunity to meet the artists between 2 and 4pm on Sunday 18 August.

For further information about unFOLD group, please visit www.unfoldtextiles.com and Instagram @unfold_textiles

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