Gallery 2 & 3

Jessie Chorley

There is a particularity to Jessie Chorley’s work. Cloth, stitch, embroidery, thread, colour, imagery: every element of her making is considered. Each piece of fabric, strand of embroidery floss and sewing notion is chosen for its inherent qualities and the memories and feelings it evokes. Passed on from hand to hand or sought out from antique markets and second-hand shops, her materials are precious scraps of life that, pieced together, form the ground of her highly personal embroidered stories and abstract landscapes.

Motifs echo across these embroideries, painstakingly stitched in a deliberately restricted vocabulary of traditional techniques: straight stitch, running stitch, satin stitch, seed stitch, and couching. The imagery is familiar, the things of everyday and of known places: home, a lamp with an illuminated shade, a table, chairs, trees, birds, horse, plants, stems, flowers, a crescent moon, the river, a boat.

Significant remembered moments and traces of places, travel, the events of life, snippets of conversations, daily rituals: this is the subject matter of Jessie’s artworks. Their narrative is fragmented, stories are not linear, they are a careful balance, built upon over time. References go back and forth, from childhood in rural North Wales to her current home in metropolitan London. Her, large and personal collection of objects, fabrics, threads, words, fragments of found plants, dried flowers all collected over the artists life and constant food and inspiration for Jessie. All convey a sense of engrossment in stitching that which is before one. Such work requires the mindful attention and commitment of maker and viewer. It asks us to slow down, to look closely and to give our time.

Curated by June Hill