Wires ran like thread lines, duo show with Faye Rita Robinson, Lot Projects, December 2022
Hands loom waiting (above), They spun to her (below) linen, direct dyes, reactive dyes, wadding, thread, salvaged fabrics, glazed ceramic, wood, Faye Rita Robinson & Sophie Giller collaborative mini quilts (Image below bottom left thanks to Bethany Houlihan, Lot Projects)
You’ll find it, Glazed ceramic, linen thread
Don’t you try (mouth loom), glazed ceramic, metal, linen thread, wool
Love language, glazed ceramic, rug canvas, wool
Above left, Install shot, work pictured from left, Faye Rita Robinson, suspended by friction, Sophie Giller Don’t you try (mouth loom), You’ll find it & knitweb, Faye Rita Robinson, Candelabra, Sophie Giller, Gift giving, Try again, Liquid Hard, Faye Rita Robinson, The horror of revelation, Those who dream of feasting wake to lamentations, above right, Sophie Giller
Above it all dripping, linen, direct dyes, reactive dyes, wadding, thread, salvaged fabrics, wood, Faye Rita Robinson & Sophie Giller Collaboration, work in top left image, far left, Those who dream of feasting wake to lamentations, Faye Rita Robinson
Knitweb, wool
From top left, Moving on, Don’t you try (mouth loom) & You’ll find it, Gift giving, Try again & Liquid hard, Don’t you try (mouth loom), Gift giving, Try again, Love language, Moving on, Liquid Hard, Install shot of Wires ran like thread lines with Faye Rita Robinson
Wires ran like thread lines is a collaborative show by Sophie Giller and Faye Rita Robinson, exploring materiality, emotion, dreams, and craft through different processes including tufting, sewing, ceramics, latch-hook, quilting, dyeing, and metalwork.
90% of the spiders we see are female. These ancient weavers produce silk, growing, building and weaving complex structures that are five times stronger than steel. The web becomes a foundation for movement, survival and protection. Giller and Robinson take this therapeutic dimension of textile crafts – working, spinning, weaving and winding – as a starting point for exploring emotion. Another key reference point is dreaming and making sense of the strange and often exhausting emotions and stories of the unconscious mind. The works act as a form of textile therapy, giving form to unprocessed emotions the way crafts transform and give meaning to raw materials.
Giller has made ceramic frames to contain textiles, acting as a support for the threads in the way spiders use walls and other surfaces on which to build and weave their webs. These works have painterly compositions that emphasise the handmade, the freeform and the irregular.
Robinson’s works explore bodily experiences and the senses, especially vision and taste, as emphasised by the eyes, lips, and goblets that recur throughout. She combines tufted textiles with unique natural materials and images such as shells and clams that both protect and reveal a hidden, precious centre. The protagonists of these works appear as if from a dream. Disembodied, surreal, or hybrid forms that are both eerie and elegant, they float above or lurch in the corners of the gallery, observing our world from theirs.
Text by Josh Mcloughlin
Sophie Giller 