Bag of Winds. Mythscapes. Alice Kettle. Courtesy the artist.
Kristen Bailey found herself between a rock and a hard place at Alice Kettle: Mythscapes, an exhibition of textile art at Hove Museum and Art Gallery until November 28.
Mythscapes is a new narrative work by Alice Kettle, known for her large-scale machine embroideries.
Based on Homer's The Odyssey, the main work is complemented by smaller satellite pieces depicting scenes from the poem, such as the Lotos Eaters, the goddess Calypso, and the release of the Bag of Winds.
Odyssey (2003) has several scenes being played out on one canvas - inspired by the Victorian reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry at the Museum of Reading.
Scylla and Charybdis (2003) depicts the original ‘rock and a hard place’. Scylla, the rock, is a ceiling-high column, covered in multicoloured stitching. Charybdis, the whirlpool, is a blue and gold ‘pool’ of fabric on the floor - shimmering, stunning.
Kettle’s palette is a gorgeous mix of matt and metallic autumnal shades, set off with a range of blues. Figures are always present in her work, sometimes indistinct – ghosts barely visible in the swathes of shining colours.
Also included in the exhibition are preparatory sketches for many of the works – pencil lines and colour washes - and a selection of older work, which gives you an idea of how her style has developed throughout her career as a textile artist.
Kettle’s embroidery grew out of her painting. Her first attempt at embroidery, from 1984, is an appliqué of velvet, chiffon and feathers. At its centre is a naïve figure with a hand sewn face.
Hove Museum boasts a significant craft collection. Courtesy Hove Museum and Art Gallery.
It was produced in order to apply for her postgraduate course and was part of her portfolio of paintings. It’s not great – particularly hung alongside her later works, but you can see the potential her interviewer obviously spotted.
Kettle usually works ‘blind’, stitching from the back of the work – as if it weren’t already a tough enough task. If you look closely at these enormous works you can see every tiny individual stitch and hanging loop of thread they are made of. She constructs and reconstructs, not afraid to pick out areas of work she has spent months working on – erasing and redrawing.
The exhibition points out the parallels between Kettle and the story of Odysseus’ loyal wife Penelope, who put off suitors by saying she had to complete a shroud for her father-in-law. She worked on it all day, unpicking the work she had done by night, so it was never complete.
Several of the works on display have a religious theme. The three-sided Chagall Column (2001) was commissioned in response to stained glass windows by Chagall in Chichester Cathedral and Tudely. Windows on each side reveal Christian symbols such as the lamb and the dove.
Completed two weeks after 9/11, Towers was delivered to Gloucester Cathedral as the Advent / Lent altar cloth. It consists of three vertical embroideries – the traditional triptych composition.
The central piece depicts a Christ figure with bloody feet. His arms are outstretched but his hands are off the edge of the cloth, not visible. Eyes closed, blood drips from his head. The theme of the piece is hope through suffering.
A video shows Kettle at work at her sewing machine. Starting with charcoal outlines on a huge canvas, she builds up layer upon layer of stitching, distorting the base fabric, buckling it.
The logistics of handling such enormous quantities of fabric are mindblowing. I think of my own modest attempts at machine embroidery and remember the snagged fabric, broken threads and snapped needles.
You need to be dedicated to spend hours and hours ‘colouring in’ vast areas of cloth with the point of a needle. In Alice Kettle’s case, it’s certainly worth it.
