Memorial Cloth
Two of Ruth Singer's recent textile artworks have been purchased by museum collections in 2019. Both pieces are textile artworks with a message; much more than simply decorative quilts or embroideries. The Memorial Sampler is now in Gawthorpe Textiles Collection and Repeat Offender Quilt is in The Brampton Museum. Both textiles have been purchased by museums which have a strong connection with the works, after they have been exhibited.
Ruth started her professional career working in museums, after doing a Masters Degree in Museum Studies. She left her museum career aged 30 in 2005 to pursue her ambition to make a living out of textiles. Over the subsequent 14 years, Ruth worked in partnership with museums and heritage collections many times. "I still get a thrill of excitement when I discover new objects, collections, personal and community stories and buildings", she says.
Memorial Sampler is a memorial to over 100 lost loved ones with names gathered through social media and from exhibition visitors to Ruth’s exhibition at Gawthorpe in 2018. The Memorial Sampler is a deeply emotional piece of work, gathering the names of loved ones who have died. Ruth started with the names of late friends and family members from her own life, and then asked on social media for contributions. She added these to the piece during the exhibition when she worked in the gallery on Meet The Artist days. She also asked for contributions from visitors to the exhibition over the three months it was on show, and after the exhibition, slowly stitched in all of those names too. There are now over 100 names stitched into the cloth.
Images courtesy of Ruth Singer. Read next: Olga Norris' article Grand Tour in the Hibernate issue. Subscribe to Selvedge here.
4 comments
Here is a link to some of the information regarding the photograph of the woman and the Criminal Quilt project: https://ruthsinger.com/criminalquilts/.
The information about the particular woman would have been too extensive to include in the above introduction to Ruth’s work and the link to her website was included at the end to encourage those who are interested in the artist’s work.
In response to the comment above, there is lots of information about the woman in the quilt which is on my website. https://ruthsinger.com/2019/07/30/museum-purchase-2/
An interesting idea but we still do not know who the female in the image is and why she was chosen, a missed opportunity.
Congratulations Ruth! How wonderful for all the people you encouraged to take part to now know that your work will remain in a place they can visit for future generations to remember their lost loved ones. It would be wonderful if you could run a project in Scotland sometime,,,please?