View Seven – ‘A Sense of Place'

Last December, View Seven held their biennial exhibition at The Menier Gallery near London’s Borough Market. The group consists of seven textile artists, whose ‘shared aim is to create great art for contemporary living – art people can live with and enjoy.’ The Menier Gallery itself is an interesting place; a large partitioned room, bare brick walls and a winding staircase set the mood. Claire Benn, Claire Higgott, Claudia Helmer, Susie Koren, Leslie Morgan, Daline Stott and Karen Farmer have put together another very interesting show entitled ‘A Sense of Place’. It explores the artists’ response to different environments and each artist has responded in their own unique style.

- Khurshid Bamboat

Claire Benn’s pieces are often quite stark and moody and she uses antique linen or hemp, accentuating the piece with hand stitching. ‘Red Rock, River and Rain’ is the first in a series based on the colours and textures of the Atacama Desert in Chile. It is on linen, breakdown printed and scraped using fibre reactive dyes, backed with cotton canvas and hand stitched with cotton thread. It is very striking, perhaps due to the colour palette. In contrast, ‘Rain for Grain’ is more subtle and Claire has used an old grain sack which she has ‘mended’ using linen thread and darning the holes. She explained that the blue negative shapes reminded her of water and raindrops and the other darned shapes reminded her of corn stocks. These two pieces hung side by side at the gallery and were much admired by visitors. The other piece that I absolutely loved was ‘Blunt Your Sharpness’ which is a quote from one of Claire’s favourite books. Completely different in colour, size and content, it was a great talking point. Using industrial felt, linen thread and countless needles of all sizes, Claire had managed to create a fantastic piece which gleamed and twinkled away.

In contrast, Karen Farmer’s pieces are awash with colour, using nature as her inspiration. Her new work is making collage in very bold, saturated colours. Four small framed pieces hung together as a group, giving the viewer an overall impact and a good selling point. I particularly liked ‘Windswept’ which is a very gentle hanging using subdued colour tones and has been beautifully quilted. In contrast to ‘Windswept’ are ‘New Shoots’ and ‘Echoes’ – very bright and very controlled. However, Karen’s attention to her piecing and quilting is apparent throughout her work and she is still true to her American roots.