SPEAKERS
Lectures will take place in Studio 1 at First Site, a contemporary art gallery and space, a two-minute walk from The Minories. Please watch this space for details and at our Instagram: @artcontex
Talking with cloth
Barbara Burman
Barbara Burman is a writer and historian, formerly an academic at the University of Southampton and the University of the Arts London. Amongst her publications, she is contributing editor of The Culture of Sewing: Gender, Consumption and Home Dressmaking (1999), co-author of The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives, 1660 -1900 (2019) and author of The Point of the Needle: Why Sewing Matters (2023). She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives near Cambridge.
Heavens' Embroidered Cloths
Helen M Stevens
Helen M. Stevens began her professional career when she opened her studio in 1981. Her pure silk embroidery has taken her to lecture and teach Masterclasses all over the world, and to exhibit in as diverse locales and epochal settings as The British Museum and Sydney Olympic Park, reflecting her work grounded in techniques dating from the Anglo Saxon world to her contemporary creations
EAST @ 30
Janette Bright
How exhibiting group EAST (East Anglian Stitch Textiles) was established and developed over a thirty-year period. It will look at some of the group's highlights and challenges as well as why for this group, research is an important aspect behind the production of art using fabric and thread.​
Photo credit: Farlie Photography
Leaving, making and wearing: what we can learn about the 18th century through the textiles of an institution
Janette Bright
It is well known that at the London Foundling Hospital fabric and thread were used as personal identifiers or tokens. In this illustrated lecture we will learn about these but also about the importance of textiles as a form of vocational and moral education.​​
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​Janette has always enjoyed being creative, but it was in the 1990s when she became seriously involved in working with textiles. She studied C&G Creative Embroidery at Chelmsford before joining the exhibiting group EAST in 2003. It was researching to exhibit with that group that led her to an interest in the London Foundling Hospital at an academic level. Now she divides her time between historical research, working at London's Foundling Museum, teaching beadwork and exhibiting with EAST
Image Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org The Foundling Hospital, Holborn, London: a bird's-eye view of the courtyard, numbered for a key. Coloured engraving after L. P. Boitard, 1753. 1753 By: Louis-Pierre Boitardafter: Theodore JacobsenPublished.
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0
Unpicking Threads: The life and work of artist Mary Beale (1633-1699) told through fibre, textiles and thread
Juliet Lockhart
Join me as we look at the story of the excellent Mrs Mary Beale and her extraordinary life during a chaotic period in history that encompassed the execution of a king, civil war, plague and fire. Find out how and why I have chosen to tell this story through stitched textiles.
Juliet is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and educator. I am currently a PhD candidate at the University of Suffolk in the Fine Art Department. The focus of my practice-led research is the life and work of seventeenth-century artist Mary Beale
Zika and Lida Asher
Mary Schoeser FRSA
Zika and Lida Asher married in 1939 and while on honeymoon Czechoslovakia was annexed so they went to London, bringing their knowledge of textiles with them. From a small start they changed the reputation of British postwar fashion and fashion fabrics, selling in France, Italy, America and, in England, to the likes of Molyneaux. You'll see the prints worn by HM Queen Elizabeth II (1947) and Princess Diana (1983). Especially known for turning scarfs into fashion statements, these feature in the talk and include examples by Henry Moore and Jean Cocteau
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Mary has over 40 years of experience as an archivist, curator and writer, mainly freelance, specialising in textiles and wallpaper. Mostly focusing on 19th and 20th-century collections, this lecture draws on her work with Dilys Blum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, for their 2019 exhibition and book, Off the Wall: American Art to Wear. Also among her many books are two broad overviews for Yale University Press and Thames & Hudson respectively: Textiles: The Art of Mankind (2012) and World Textiles (revised 2022). The former informed the Fashion Textile Museum exhibition that opened 28th March, 2025
My textile discovery with nature
Nicola Whayman
A Free Lecture
A reflection of my 2 years of work looking at my natural resources and how I have used them in my textile work.
I am a textile artist who is inspired by my natural surroundings, using my senses and experience to create reflective pieces of work. Using local resources and pre-loved items as much as possible in response to and care for my environment.
Writing with a Needle
Sara Impey
Sara will show examples of recent work and describe how she uses free-motion machine stitching to create lettering.
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Sara Impey is an internationally known textile artist. Her work is based on the techniques of quiltmaking and her speciality is stitching words. A former journalist, she writes the texts herself and uses the textile surface to comment on social, political or personal issues, sometimes with a dash of humour. She has worked in several national and international museum collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the International Quilt Museum in Nebraska and the American Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Sara comes from a farming family in Feering and lives in Coggeshall.