Sunday 24 August 2014

Embroiderers' Guild "Kickstart" Exhibition

The East Midlands Region runs an annual programme to encourage members to create and exhibit embroidery. This years the theme was Flowers. The key thing about the Kickstart programme is that it requires participants to take a one day course related to the theme. Only with attendance at these can a member exhibit work. 
The downside of this is that there is so little notice of the dates of the day courses that if your diary is busy you miss out. I was very sad not to have been able to take part in one of the two run by Alysn Midgelow Marsden which were very well receive by participants and which concentrated on simplifying and abstracting elements to create a design.  So having heard such good things about the preparatory days I was a little disappointed when I went to the exhibition in Daventry. I don't know if this was the sum total of the entries for the region or a section of the entries. I hope it was a section! The venue did not do the entries many favours. 
There were some stunning pieces of work among the entries, the following stood out among the selection. My apologies to the artists that I have lost the sheet with their names and work titles so they are here, unattributed.







In a very image conscience world I do get very cross when organisations fail to display work to its advantage and in a way that is sympathetic to the artwork. When Jo Public sees an exhibition like this it's not that surprising that folk go away describing the work as "homemade" which is such a put down. Voluntary groups are their own worst enemy in this respect.






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