Memory is the Seamstress

A group exhibition curated by Murtaza Vali, featuring works by Hangama Amiri, Cian Dayrit, Melissa Joseph, Lebohang Kganye, Jagdeep Raina and Raed Yassin.

“Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after.” The Virginia Woolf quote proposes sewing a metaphor for the unpredictable processes of memory, its ability to suture together the disparate fragments of daily life into a narrative fabric that can feel both connected and disjointed.

Showcasing the diversity within textile arts, this exhibition brings together artists using a variety of techniques, from appliqué and felting to hand and machine embroidery, to translate the photographic into fabric. Countering the instantaneity of photographic capture, and the amnesia it paradoxically enables, the gradual accumulative labour of textile work reintroduces the complex and unpredictable textures of memory, creating room for imagination and play, for affect and critique, softening the sharp contours of an indexical record into a collage, an impression, an annotation, an image, “and a capricious one at that”.

To 3 November.