Show's UP!

Ok it's a been a few weeks since I posted but the 'Heirloom' exhibition is up and I am pretty pleased with how it looks. Less cluttered than last time and I actually brought a couple of pieces back home with me because I didn't want to hang one above another.
I like to think that this collection is more considered than previous work and therefore wanted a more minimal layout.
It is on at Burslem School of Art until Monday 4th August 2008 and here's the pic's!




Extracts from the accompanying written piece which is available at the gallery or by emailing me via the website http://www.rachel-grant.com/

"While creating this collection of new work I have been interested in the questions relating to the ‘evidence of our past’, from buildings and homes right through to tiny artefacts and found items, many of which are on display in varying ways within this exhibition. Wallpaper removed from terraces in the process of being demolished for example, shards of pottery embedded within felted knit, a 1929 sixpence sitting amongst thumbnail images of a scarred city and family history correspondence hanging without apparent function.
Both as individuals and communities we are faced with the decisions of what we should preserve and what we can safely discard, and equally who should be responsible for these decisions."

"We cannot live in the past but equally we cannot live in the future. It is easy to perceive the regeneration programme as a remedial process, with a defined beginning and end. Indeed the funding may have a clear start and finish but improvement is ongoing and cannot be defined by any one set of indicators. This idea is expressed in the two linen panels titled ‘Unfinished’. The first, Winchester Cathedral, was passed to me from a Great Aunt who had begun to embroider over the transfer background, and my grandmother had then continued it. Included with the embroidery was a skein of matching thread, with the intention that I pick up where they had left off. In the same way I have created the second panel with a transfer of the Sadler’s Park housing development in Burslem. The initial stitches are made, the matching thread attached, it is now ready to be passed on to the next generation for them to make their own mark." Rachel Grant ©2008