Textile Study Group

artists and tutors sharing ideas imagination and skills

Eternal, detail
156 x 156 cms. Cotton organdie.
Closer view

After 25 years teaching in further and higher education, I am concentrating on freelance work and in 2009 returned to research study as an MA student at Manchester Metropolitan University. My current studies explore the haptic qualities of touch, incident, memory and the passage of time.

Recent exhibition work has explored gloves and working hands. I worked with the glove collections at the Bankfield Museum in Halifax, Aston under Lyne, Yeovil and Northampton Museums for my solo, touring exhibition G'love Stories, which was supported by the Arts Council. I traced older glove makers and incorporated their stories as well as artefacts from the glove industry into the works.

I frequently combine mixed media with textiles and use a limited range of materials, often strongly contrasting in weight and character. Open structured materials often figure in my work with drawing and manipulating threads, exploring the perception of fragility. The quality of the drawn line and mark are important to me. Colour is used symbolically to reinforce ideas.

I am a distance learning tutor with the Julia Caprara School of Textile Arts on the BA Textile Degree and work with independent groups specialising in mentoring, design workshops and experimental approaches to re-evaluating traditional techniques. I have lectured at the Victoria and Albert Museum and teach regularly on summer schools. I have contributed to various books published in both USA and Britain.

In 2003 I co-curated the Textile Study Group exhibition Material Works off the Wall at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum. This exhibition incorporated exhibits from the Museum of Iron into the group's three-dimensional textile responses and developed my interest in working with Museums, responding to their individual collections and to the environment of the museum.

I enjoy working with architects and clients on challenging commissions and have completed a number of substantial ecclesiastical and domestic commissions. An exciting development of my commission work has been the opportunity to design for stained glass leading to opportunities for collaboration with glass maker Tony Sandles and the development of innovative glass which retains the image of textile structures.

Missing Threads, detail
Glass. 58 x 41 x 1 cms.
Closer view

Sarah Burgess