LONDON.- Patrick Heide Contemporary Art is presenting the summer group exhibition, entitled Woven Dialogues.
Woven Dialogues brings together five artists, Kate Terry, Bonolo Kavula, Raphaella Pester, Dillwyn Smith and Defne Tesal, whose practices, though geographically and culturally distinct, share a deep commitment to materiality and the expressive possibilities of textiles and fibre. The exhibition stages a series of encounters: between intimate, hand-built objects and site-specific interventions; between natural pigments and industrially coloured found materials; and between raw, undyed earth tones and vibrant neon hues.
Kate Terry (b. 1976, Canada) opens the conversation with a bold spatial intervention. Stretching hundreds of parallel lines of brightly coloured thread across the gallery, she traces the geometry of the space, almost anchoring the air with suspended tension. The installation slices through the room, altering the viewer's movement and sightlines while transforming a lightweight material into a powerful study of physical volume and optical illusion.
Bonolo Kavula (b. 1992, South Africa) builds intricate, elaborate soft structures through a process of perpetual repetition, using tiny circles of punched shweshwe fabric and thread. Though formally abstract and geometric, her materials carry significant cultural weight: shweshwe is deeply embedded in South African colonial history and the artist's personal memory. Kavula deconstructs and reconstructs this tradition, giving rise to new, transformative meanings.
Raphaella Pester (b. 1994, UK) creates quilted and patchwork textiles that spring from nature and natural resources, investigating themes of landscape, folklore and memory. Her fabric works bridge traditional crafts such as embroidery and stitching with the natural histories of specific landscapes and geographies. All of her materials are found or recycled, while the pigments are sourced and collected by hand, primarily from the coastal areas of Cornwall and Devon. Together, they serve as a catalyst for broader ideas of personal, social and topographical identity.
Dillwyn Smith (b. 1958, UK) approaches textiles through the lens of painting, building large-scale compositions from coloured strips of fabric that are stitched together and stretched onto supports. The colour in Smith's work resides within the fabric itself rather than on its surface, refracting light in ways that paint cannot. His practice enters into dialogue with the tradition of Colour field abstraction while remaining sensuous and permeable. Semi-transparent fabrics reveal the structure beneath, intentionally burnt sections of the wooden stretcher, which become part of the composition, creating an interplay between materials and colour.
Defne Tesal (b. 1985, Turkey) explores the concepts of time, rhythm and containment. Her sculptural vessels are meticulously woven by hand from raw jute, translating repetitive, meditative gestures into physical volume. In the context of Woven Dialogues, they act as a grounding presence: undyed and earth-coloured, they explore the quiet boundary between internal sanctuary and external architecture.
