Sullington Manor Farm

Conversations with Textiles is the title of an exhibition from September 17-27 at Sullington Manor Farm, Sullington which brings together the Curious Threads group of artists who engage fabric as a living participant in their creative process.

Spokeswoman Sue Duncan said: “Making is not a means to an end, but an ongoing relationship between the artist and their medium. Much as a painter uses a canvas, textile artists use fabric to tell stories, express emotion or convey a message. Their work emerges from dialogue between hand, memory and imagination.

“The Curious Threads artists combine traditional sewing techniques with the contemporary creative processes of stitching, dyeing, felting, printing and surface manipulation. Each finds a personal rhythm with their textiles, a tempo shaped by the material itself. The cloth speaks through its pattern, texture, colour, its fold.

“The artists think and respond with their hands, adjusting intuitively as the work evolves responding to the voice of the textiles. Decisions are rarely fixed, they arise from a distinctive sense of freedom from questioning, listening, experimenting, embracing the ‘what if’….

“Together, the artists of Curious Threads demonstrate that textiles are far more than functional materials. They are vessels of memory, identity and imagination. Each stitch records a decision, each layer reflects attentive listening.

“Their work invites the viewer to sense this dialogue – to see evidence of patience, skills and care embedded in every surface.

“This exhibition encourages audiences to consider their own relationship with textiles. What stories do fabrics hold? What memories are stitched into their seams. In observing these works, we are invited to imagine the rhythm of the maker’s hand, the quiet concentration, the tactile exchange between fibre and fingers.

“Conversations with Textiles celebrates this subtle but powerful interaction, thread moving through cloth, tradition meeting experimentation, artists listening closely to what their materials have to say. In doing so, it honours the enduring dialogue between past and present, maker and material, a conversation that continues stitch by stitch. “

Conversations with Textiles will be at Sullington Manor Farm, Sullington Lane, Storrington, RH20 4AE from September 17-27. Open daily 10am-4pm with an on-site café in the Old Workshop. Free entry and parking adjacent to St Mary’s Saxon church. More information www.curiousthreads.co.uk; @curious_threads; www.sullingtonmanorfarm.co.uk