Anna Ray: Fibre and Form

26 Nov 2021-17 Apr 2022

Overview

UH Arts + Culture and St Albans Museum + Gallery are delighted to present the first major survey exhibition ‘Fibre and Form’ of sculptural textile work by acclaimed artist Anna Ray.

Working from a studio in Hertfordshire, Anna Ray has an impressive international commissioning and exhibition record with her stitched artwork. ‘Fibre and Form’ will focus on large-scale sculptural pieces created over the past  20 years. It will feature two newly commissioned sculptures entitled Mesh and Rosette, which have been fabricated during lockdown with funding from Arts Council England. The exhibition will pivot on these ambitious new assemblages and Ray’s seminal wall piece Margate Knot, originally produced for the exhibition ‘Entangled: Threads & Making’, Turner Contemporary (2017).
Ray offers an artistic practice that is highly accessible and appealing to the public, while also pioneering within the field of art textiles and soft sculpture. Her assemblages are full of joy and life; their palette bright and varied; their form and surface rich and highly tactile. In their fabrication, the artist has developed specialist techniques of stitching, wrapping and stuffing fabrics, which repeat and build in relation to each other – enabling new possibilities. Ray’s practice is a perpetual experimentation, she will have half a dozen artworks in development at any one time. She sees herself and the actions of her body as part of the work; building and dismantling component parts becomes a form of performance.