Layers of Time: Susan Moxley’s Homage to Island Life
At this year’s Collect Art Fair, Susan Moxley’s textiles drew visitors back for repeated viewings. Represented by Jenny Blyth Fine Art, her work offered a striking contrast to the bustling energy of the fair, viewers recognised the quiet depth of her stitched narratives, imbued with stillness, history, and an intimate connection to place.
Moxley, an internationally recognised artist born in South Africa, has spent forty years between the UK and the Greek island of Kythera. Her textiles are collaged from vintage, handwoven fabrics—home-spun goat hair, sheep’s wool, cotton, and linen—dyed with natural pigments from the island’s minerals and flora. Over time, she has gathered these materials, giving discarded fabrics new life, layering them into abstract landscapes that reflect both the physical terrain and the memories embedded within the cloth.
Susan Moxley, Palimpsest, Home spun and handwoven goat hair, sheep’s wool, cotton & linen dyed with natural pigments, flax & thread.
In works such as Palimpsest and Darned Landscape (Lead Image), fabric is pieced together like a painter’s canvas, then stitched with narrative in vintage thread. Each work holds echoes of past use, honouring the time and labor of the women who wove these textiles on homemade looms. Water Woman I, with its layered threads and forms, explores the island’s precarious relationship with water, depicting the female body as a vessel—both a literal and symbolic container of life...
(...)
Want to read more of this article?
We are proud to be a subscriber-funded publication with members in 185 countries. We know our readership is passionate about textiles, so we invite you to help us preserve and promote the stories, memories, and histories that fabric holds. Your support allows us to publish our magazine, and also ‘what's on’ information, and subscription interviews, reviews, and long-read articles in our online blog.
ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? CLICK HERE TO ACCESS CONTENT
OR...to continue reading….
Magazine subscribers automatically get free access to all our online content. We send the access code by email with the publication of each issue. You will also find it on the envelope containing your magazine. Please note the access code changes every issue.
-
Image Credits:
Lead Image: Susan Moxley, Darned Landscape, Home spun and handwoven goat hair, sheep’s wool, cotton & linen dyed with natural pigments, flax & thread.
All other images courtesy of Susan Moxley and Jason Warner, Firefly Studios © 2024