Exhibition Opening

Thank you for the great turn out and support.

 

Extract of Sheila's opening speech:

"I’d like to welcome you and thank you for your valued support. On behalf of the FACT group, a big thank you to Cate Wood Hunter, the curator of the Casa Labia Cultural Centre, for giving us the opportunity to exhibit our work in this prestigious space.

The members of FACT, which stands for Fibre Artists Cape Town, began collaborating 5 years ago with the primary intention of promoting the use of fibre as a legitimate tool in the creation fine art. We come from various backgrounds in quilting and the graphic and fine arts, and we work in very different ways. Some of us use a beautiful piece of fabric as a starting point, others dye or paint fabric for a specific project, some use heat guns and soldering irons to create textures, and some employ very time-consuming hand-embroidery to embellish their work.

The tactile and textural qualities of fibre art are what set it apart from other fine art, and for this reason we actually requested Cate to select this exhibition from the actual works as opposed to photographs. So, when you look at the pieces, give some close attention to aspects such as distressing fabrics with heat, as in ‘Derelict’ and ‘Smoke and Mirrors’, adding found and recycled materials, as in ‘Out the Box Challenge’ and ‘Poppies’, hand embroidery, as in ‘Elements’ and ‘Losing the Thread’, dense machine quilting, as in ‘Still Life with Copper Urn’ and ‘Gotham Reflections’.

Six of the seven artists are here today and will be very happy to engage with you on aspects of their work. With that I declare this exhibition open. Enjoy and let others know about it. It runs till the 13^th of April. Thank you."

Stitched Exhibition Catalogue