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Lucy Brown

Brighton
I am an artist who works within Textile Practice making installations and sculpture. These works explore issues around the body, dress, identity, social history and making skills.
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“Lucy Brown's work is exceptional in her generation of textile practitioners for both its consistent approach to thought-provocation, material meaning, and accessibility, and its significant underpinning with an authentic, reflective inner dialogue with the material and the cultural meanings it conjures”.  Professor Catherine Harper, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at University for the Creative Arts, and Editor-in-Chief of Textile: Cloth and Culture (Taylor & Francis).

clothed/unclothed - body presence/absence - attachment/detachment - internal/external - boundaries - the feminine  - known/unknown histories - visible/invisible memories -             re-working - re-making - re-telling - re-feminising

I use a mixed palette of old, unwanted second hand clothing, hair and personal artefacts as raw material. I make visceral woven installations, anti-form sculpture, site-specific and individual objects for public exhibitions and projects. Narratives depart from personal or collective experiences and explore themes around the body, dress, femaleness, textile histories, nostalgic and craft-labour.  

Sourcing, collecting, drawing and making are core motivations in the work. Raw materials are sourced from second hand clothes shops, markets and online. It is the raw materials embodied history and memory that interests me, its previous existence. These items are selected and deconstructed through methods of cutting, unpicking and ripping.

Free-hand weaving techniques are developed through physical, sensory, emotional and psychological engagement with selected clothing. The speculative play around the visible and invisible history of the raw material and the internal and external surfaces all contribute to these responses. There is a seductive and obsessive drive with the raw materials, which fuels the desire to make and physically interact with the garments. Weaving is both language and method to reconstruct / re-invent these materials exploring ideas around re-telling/ re-working histories, re-claiming / re-configuring female body image.

Installation and anti-form works develop over two stages; first stage weaving takes place in the studio on an up-right Eager Loom. Second stage is when weaves are cut loose of the loom and transferred to a space where works are installed, extended and realised. Current works are using multiple selections of clothing, exploring bodily gestures as an extension of an emotion. There are themes around the unfinished and unresolved, meaning that works has are in a constant state of ‘becoming’.

I studied BA Hons Textile Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since graduating in 1995 I have continually made work for exhibitions, commissions and developed short and long term education projects for arts organisations, schools, colleges and universities. Exhibitions and new work commissions include ‘6th Riga International Textile and Fibre Art Triennial’2018 Arsenals Exhibition Hall, Riga, Latvia; ‘Offerings’ Solo Exhibition 2018. R-Space Gallery Lisburn Northern Ireland; ‘Lace Unveiled’ 2018 Newstead Abbey. Nottinghamshire; ‘Unravelling Nyman’s’, 2012  Nyman’s House and Gardens National Trust UK and ‘Offerings’ Project Space, COLLECT 2012, Saatchi Gallery London UK. My work has been reviewed and featured in many publications including ‘Domestic Spaces: The Uncanny Lucy Brown’ by Professor Catherine Harper. Surface Design USA Spring 2019:  ‘Lucy Brown: ‘Secrets she keeps from herself’ by Professor Catherine Harper; Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice Jan 2019, and Dr Jessica Hemmings'  book - 'Warp & Weft' Published by Bloomsbury 2012.

 

 

Loss (Ball n Tress)

Browns’ Suit

‘since i fell for you...’ hanging in an old Sussex Barn

Lucy Juicy-Juicy Lucy

“it’s what’s inside: Pink Pourings" by lucybrownsarahpager

"it's whats inside: Pourings" by lucybrownsarahpager

“it’s what’s inside” by lucybrownsarahpager

Mary Hindles’ bit of skirt 1826

the secrets we keep from ourselves…

Bit of Skirt

Waisted/wasted

Unruly

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Highlights: 11 - 17 November, 2024

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