Rachel Pearcey

​

Previously shown in

Warp, weft, stitch, thread 2021

​

My fury expressed 2025

​

Rachel Pearcey’s work is mark making, it used to be with pen and ink but is now mainly stitched marks on secondhand, preloved, discarded, unwanted textiles.  Everything she uses in her work has been something else, has had another life, been softened and faded with time and use.  It is what things were that attracts her, the memory of them and what memories they might still hold.  

 

As a protest against the inescapable rise of inequality, environmental degradation and misogyny Rachel has taken to stitching words to ‘voice’ her frustration, to counter her sense of powerlessness.  In spite of the seriousness of the subjects her work is often humorous; as she says “my fury is expressed (yet safely concealed) in the stabbing stitches”.*

​

Plain Weave 3​

This is a reworking of a pen and ink drawing. But where the marks on paper would stop and start here the stitches go in and out to give the ‘under and over’ appearance of warp and weft, on top of the warp and weft of the canvas. In using thread the work takes on a delicate 3D quality, both physically and visually:  as the stitches get closer together they create dense patches, taking on the appearance of folds and creases, these ‘fold and creases’ then need to be ‘loosened up’, but then ‘too loose’ and the weave seems to sag. In spite of how slow the process and how considered the placing of every stitch, each work develops in its own way, takes on a life of its own. 

​​

​

If you are interested in Rachel Pearcey's work,

please enquire below

​

​