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Allegory

Allegory was a solo exhibition, hosted by the Crafts Study Centre, UCA (24 November 2009 - 13 March 2010, 3000 visitors) and which toured four further venues (around 10,000 visitors) including the inaugural contemporary exhibition at the Willis Museum, Basingstoke in 2011.

The work investigates the use of figurative, allegorical and pictorial narrative, which acknowledges its historical roots in linear, sequential form of the Bayeaux tapestry. The inception of this strand of research was a work titled Metamorphosis, which was included in the Fabric of Myth exhibition, Compton Verney, 2008.

Allegory comprises a collection of 21 new works, which collectively examine how structural and descriptive narrative depictions are reinterpreted and expressed through stitch practice. The research investigates descriptive/gestural machine stitch with new methodologies, technologies and linked compositions. Kettle’s distinctive use of free machine stitch is expanded to an architectural scale.

Allegory utilises composition and stitch construction applied to the temporal notion of the allegorical/cyclical, and the real or imagined. The formal and classical structures of allegory are reimagined and personify epic themes of life and death. The subject is specifically explored through reference to Nicholas Poussin’s allegorical painting A Dance to the Music of Time in the Wallace Collection.

The key work in Allegory, entitled Pause, was selected by the World Crafts Council for the European Applied Arts Prize 2011 and exhibited in the Belger Arts Centre, Kansas City, USA, with an accompanying presentation at the ‘Off the Grid’ Surface Design Association Conference 2009. Other works (Rupt, Cor, Sol) were selected for the 7th International Triennale of Contemporary Textile Arts, Tournai, Belgium 2011.

The Allegory exhibition has a supporting catalogue (ISBN 0955437466), was reviewed in the magazines Crafts, Selvedge and Embroidery, and illustrated in Machine Stitch Perspectives ,Bloomsbury, 2010.