Exhibitions, Projects, Awards

Exhibitions, Projects, Awards

 Exhibitions
2014 Time and Place, The Avent Gallery, Dulwich. (with Margaret Tayor and Janis Firminger)
2016 Looking Out, Looking In, The Deasil Gallery, Leamington Spa (with Jean Draper, Janis Firminger, Mary Griffin and Kathy Webster)
2020 China Nights (2), selected for the Coventry Open 2020 Exhibition, The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry.
2020 The Workhouse Test and When the Rain Stops (1) selected for the Rugby Open 2020, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum.
2022 Trekking and Footfall selected for the Rugby Open 2022, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum.
2022-23  LB's Justice Quilt selected for Nothing About Us without Us,  disabled people's activism past present and future, The People's History Museum, Manchester.
September -October 2023  The Broadway Group, Fourfold: an exhibition of contemporary stitched textiles,  Plus One Gallery, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum.
Projects and Events
2014, I was one of the makers (with Jean Draper, Margaret Taylor, and Janis Firminger) of LB’s Justice Quilt, a large participatory textile piece created as a memorial to Connor Sparrowhawk, a young learning disabled man, sometimes known as ‘LB’. Connor drowned in a bath in 2013 in a closed hospital unit where he was a temporary patient. His inquest concluded that neglect contributed to his death and the hospital unit was subsequently closed because of poor standards of care. 

The quilt now owned by Connor’s family, was made from hundreds of patches of cloth contributed by people who wanted to offer their support and promote the rights of people with learning disabilities. Contributors were drawn from all over the UK and seven other countries. During 2014 and 2016, LB’s Justice Quilt was exhibited widely. 
Exhibition venues included:
  • The Peoples History Museum, Manchester 
  • The Yorkshire Sculpture Park
  • The Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster University
  • The Kings Fund
  • Mansfield College, University of Oxford 
  • Warwick Arts Centre
  • Coventry Cathedral.
LB’s Justice Quilt was a very important project for me at a personal level and it also reflected the long and honourable history of textile art and craft being used as a medium of political commentary, protest and resistance. Some of the collective events that I helped to organise around the making and exhibiting of the piece involved not only high levels of public participation but also collaboration between academics and students across the disciplines of law, textile art, music and the social sciences. 

Prizes
2019 The University of Warwick Connecting Cultures Art Competition. Runner up prize.
2020  The Rugby Open 2020, Rugby Museum and Art Gallery. Highly Commended Judges' Prize.

Work in Publications
2018 In: Draper, J (2018) Stitch and Pattern, London, Batsford

Papers
2018 Conference paper ‘LB’s Justice Quilt’ at Craft Activism: collaborative crafting, the search for justice and the creation of emotional objects. Oxford Brookes University and Oxford Visual Arts Development Agency (OVADA), Oxford, May. 


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