Celebrating Quilts

A major event in the Selvedge calendar is coming up this August: the Festival of Quilts 2019. Although the Festival has been running for several years now, every year offers something different and 2019 is no exception. Visitors to this year's Festival can expect to see headline artists like US art quilter Michael James and Australian eco-dyer India Flint, who will both be giving lectures during the event.

In her talk Being T(here), India will share stories and images of her responses to place. A born wanderer, India's work conflates the visual and written poetics of place and memory. She engages with the landscape by walking, mapping and recording her responses to the land through a variety of media. Cloth, paper, stone, water, minerals, bones, and other artefacts find themselves represented in India's work. “I negotiate a path between installation, printing, painting, drawing, writing and sculpture. The work of each day, philosophically rooted in topophilia (the love of place) literally begins with a walk."

Michael James' talk Making Sense of a Studio Life: 45 Years and Counting will attempt to address the ambiguity inherent in his work as he reflects on over forty years of studio production. Referring to his textile work, people often ask Michael James “Why are these quilts? Why aren’t they paintings?” Neither ‘fish nor fowl’, James’s quilts have been difficult for some people to categorise, which, as he will explain, he eventually came to terms with as an artist. 

Alongside the programme of talks and lectures, this year's Festival highlights include hundreds of workshops run by leading quilting tutors (the most extensive workshop programme in the Festival’s history); and over three-hundred exhibitors offering essential supplies. The Festival’s galleries will be adorned with works by internationally-acclaimed artists and groups, and in the Japanese Pavilion, a selection of handpicked suppliers from the International Great Quilt Festival in Tokyo will be showcasing hard-to-find fabrics and supplies in the UK for the first time.

Selvedge readers can use the discount code SVG19 for £2 off standard advance adults/ £1 off standard advance concessions, £1.95 fulfilment fee applies per transaction (£2.50 for posted tickets). Book tickets here.