Rachel Johnston

Clay is a piece that uses geometry and line to convey a sense of fragility. Geological structures are explicitly addressed: the repetitious and pattern-like triangular knotting is based on the molecular structure of clay as well as the visual appearance of rock. Made from knotted linen and cotton the quality of fragmentation is explicitly developed in this piece. Built up a warp vertically, the even pattern of the knots and the triangular tesselation begin to space and become more random. The piece is cut from the scaffolding that it is made on, to be hung horizontally on the wall, losing its geometry to suggest the collapse that is inherent in many coastal areas.

Artist Bio

I am an artist working with textile-based media and photography. I trained in Fine Art at Norwich School of Art and the Royal College of Art and have worked in public art, community engagement and HE Fine Art teaching since then. My artwork focusses on themes of place and narrative and is grounded in material process, using weaving to make textural objects that reflect an embodied experience of landscape. Using tapestry techniques as a basis for the work and the qualities of weight and movement that it conjures, I draw consciously on textile tradition and the interrelationships of pattern and form that are inherent to it. I am increasingly aware of what artist Teresa Lancetta describes as the ‘open source’ nature of weaving, the potential for the binary structure of warp and weft, as a way of expressing lived experience through fibres of one kind or another. Website: racheljohnstonart.com