Caroline Bartlett

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Warp, weft, stitch, thread 2021

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This series started with investigations into the collections at the Craft Study Centre in Farnham, a process disrupted with the onset of the Covid pandemic. Subsequently, these pieces have become part of an ongoing thought process concerned with the interaction of factors both internal and external, which impact on, and induce change in a maker's work.  Some factors interact to maintain stability and others to promote change. Changes might be radical or incremental, planned or emerge, initiated by outside factors or from within.

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Working beyond the surface, layering and reworking, Bartlett uses textiles to articulate ideas about the journey through life as it folds backwards and forwards on itself.   How we record memory is a concern central to her practice and this is often extended into work which responds to site and to collections and archives.

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There is a focus on sensory qualities accompanied by an impression of restraint; of something considered, informed in part by Japanese aesthetics. Here, one work leads to another and there is a sense of a conversation between the pieces each reflecting elements of the former as though remembering its nuances.

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Her work is in various collections including those of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Whitworth Art Gallery, and the Crafts Council