
contemporary art gallery Arundel West Sussex UK
tel: +44 1903 885323
Open Tues-Sat 11-4. Sun 12-4
Claire Benn
Previously shown in
Her quiet materials 2021
Warp weft stitch thread 2021
Fibre: structure and surface 2022
Earth materials 2023
Unearthed 2023
Cloth and clay 2024
These works draw inspiration from the land, but this time Claire went beneath the surface to go back in time and dig more deeply. She buried antique French hemp in the soil over the winter, digging it up in April to discover it had been delicately tinted and eaten away – these became her ‘fragments’.
These fragments - along with other pigment-painted pieces of cloth - spoke to Claire of ancient ground. This led her to archaeology and the grave goods or findings that might be discovered in the earth, and she commissioned Sylvia Quinnell to make small silver and bronze artefacts to stitch to the cloth.
Claire also has a stash of antique cloth. Digging into it, she excavated an old French grain sack, nicely holed with some lines of murky blue warp thread. She took this with her to a three-week retreat in north-west Scotland; the colour of the sack became the bracken, the blue lines became the rivers, the holes became the lochs and through intensive stitch, she created the shore. ‘The Land, the Lochs, the Rivers and the Shore’ is therefore firmly rooted in her love of landscape and the far north-west.
Click images for details and if you are interested in any of Claire Benn's work please enquire below.















