WINCHESTER.- Multi award-winning textile artist Alice Kettle returns to the Winchester Discovery Centre this autumn with a stunning exhibition of new and existing work that commemorates the 10-year anniversary of her commission to create the spectacular Looking Forwards to the Past artwork, for the then, brand-new, building.

Curated by Hampshire Cultural Trust, Alice Kettle: Threads brings together a wide selection of the artist’s work made over the past decade including a number of works from public and private collections, specially sourced for this unique retrospective.

While she trained as a painter, Kettle has been lauded by her contemporaries for “her use of a craft medium, consistently and on an unparalleled scale.” With curator Sara Roberts stating “The scale of her work belies their component parts: individual tiny stitches, which combine to form great swathes of colour, painterly backgrounds incorporating rich hues and metallic sheen.”

The exhibition celebrates Kettle’s artistic journey in stitch, literally weaving stories that often connect to her roots in the county. An artist of international significance, Alice was born in Winchester and still lives and works in her native city, with her work also familiar to art lovers living in and around Chichester, where she has regularly exhibited at the Candida Stevens and Pallant House galleries.

Visitors to Winchester Discovery Centre will also see the first major work for the emerging Thread Bearing Witness project, in which she is working in partnership with refugees, including displaced women artists, to create monumental textile works which tell their individual stories. Much of the inspiration for Thread Bearing Witness has come from Alice’s daughter, Tamsin Koumis, who has worked closely with refugees.

With migration becoming one of, if not the defining issue of our time, this ambitious new project seeks to connect concerned communities and individuals across the UK by inviting them to get stitching, show solidarity and raise funds for displaced people around the world. Thread Bearing Witness will conclude at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester in 2018. “How each individual, group, industry and family chooses to respond to this subject will shape the foundations of our future communities,” Alice says.

Simultaneously, Alice is working on a local level to connect personally with individual refugees and asylum seekers, asking them to work with her to contribute to and inform new monumental stitched artworks. These artworks are inspired by the strength, resilience, and hospitality of the women and children whom she and her family have worked with.

“Textiles offer a powerful medium through which to explore themes of cultural heritage, journeys and displacement,” Kettle states, adding: “Embroidery is a domestic practice representing home-making; it is steeped in the history of trade routes with its global connections to production and pattern. The exhibition will use thread to examine the interconnected social world we live in.”

Artwork sales for this project will be donated to charities supporting displaced people.

The Discovery Centre’s show is complimented by a concurrent exhibition of Alice’s work at Candida Stevens Gallery in Chichester (Alice Kettle: More Threads, 4 – 25 November 2017).

Alice Kettle is a contemporary textile / fibre artist based in the UK. She is currently Professor in Textile Arts at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University. Her large scale works continue the tradition of monumental textiles. Alice’s work is represented in various public collections, such as the Crafts Council London, the Museo Internazionale delle Arti Applicate Oggi (MIAAO), Turin, Italy and Winchester Discovery Centre. Commissions include the National Library of Australia, the Scottish High Court in Edinburgh, Gloucester and Winchester Cathedrals and the School of Music & Drama at Manchester University. She recently completed a major commission for Lloyds Register Global Technology Centre at Southampton University.