Sue Lawty's tapestries have long been evocative of rugged landscape. Now she's working with the rocks themselves.
... Lawty's subtly textured, earth-coloured abstract tapestries, tautly woven from such fibres as hemp, linen and raphia, have a distinctive 'dry', bleached finish. Inspired by landscape, although in a purely allusive ... way, her irregularly fractured compositions evoke rock faces, geological strata and hard, arid mineral terrains. They are patinated rather than patterned.
... While she remains committed to tapestry, she now creates 'stone drawings' - wall-mounted or suspended collages composed of small pebbles or fragments of shell and coral, collected from various beaches and quarries over the years. Carefully graded by colour and shape, the stones are laid out in simple rhythmic formations - lines, grids, spirals and circles - evoking the warp and weft of woven fabrics, stone circles, ammonites and runes. What fascinates her is that, although these groups of pebbles look similar, each individual stone is unique. 'In the natural world, different is ordinary, whereas sameness is extraordinary,' she says.
... In a display connected with her artist residency at the museum, subtle tapestries in linen, hemp, and silk share space with compositions of found shells and stones, many collected on walks near her home and studio in Hebden Bridge ...
... How can [the arrangements] appear so calm and at the same time contain so much energy and power? ... I found myself constructing chains of words ... little mantras to match the mandala like quality of the work, Do read the essays in the catalogue rock - raphia - linen -lead. I was struck by the constant cross-references, the cyclical nature of the development of Sue Lawty's work. It is certain to continue.
.. The exhibition incorporates several decades of an artist's response to the natural environment around her through different mediums ...
Sue Lawty is a self-taught weaver who creates tapestries rich in early colours and texture. Lawty has worked with museum collections for over 20 years. In 2004, she exhibited new work at Bankfield Museum, Halifax: 'Rock-Raphia-Linen-Lead' included a series of stone drawings. Lawty sees no tension working with two different mediums - fibre and stone - believing that as landscape has informed her weaving, so warp and weft now influence her stone pieces. In her latest partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum, she has worked closely with the historic textile collection to create a new work - her journey of exploration is made public through her on-line diary.
... Known as a tapestry weaver, recent work developed by Sue Lawty included a series of paper works using small stones and shells; combining her passions for textiles and the land. 'My work is informed by the land - most particularly by rock for its embodiment of time and structure. And it is informed through the study of textile - looking at qualities of texture, material, rhythm and most importantly - structure.'
... Sue Lawty speaks of herself as 'a contemporary person embedded in a line of history' ...
... This interplay of materials has, she feels, captured the attention of people who may have no knowledge of textiles.
A 48pp monograph ... edited by Philip Hughes, with an introduction by Sue Prichard and an essay by Michael Brennand-Wood, accompanies the project. (Available from The Book Case)
... Sue Prichard, Curator of Contemporary Textiles at the V&A, describes Lawty's work 'not [as] fast food for the eye, but an intense and joyous celerbation of the natural world, articulated in textural form. Lawty herself speaks of 'journeys that begin even before you know you have started', citing a childhood project in which she sorted the various pips of fruit and vegetables, carefully washed, dried and assembled into a mosaic: actions echoed decades later in her current work.
Commenting on Lawty's work in the V&A's catalogue of her solo exhibition, Michael Brennand-Wood writes: 'Stones, patternings in natural rock formations have been adapted and sanctified since the earliest times ... Sue's work in a different time frame, on a completely different scale, relates to some of the above primal ideas. ..."