Statement
My work focuses on the emotional dimensions in the words loss, absence and grief.
I use textiles in my work as we experience them in all aspects of our everyday lives and have built up a vocabulary not only of words but of feelings and memories which we associate with them. We touch, handle, see, wear and use them. This experience allows us to think about their involvement in containing the history of our lives, our emotions and our memories.
I often use bedsheets as the main fabric in my work, either whole or as fragments. Bedsheets act as silent witnesses to many natural processes in life such as birth, puberty, pleasure, disease, decay and death. They bear witness to passions spent before sleep and dreams forgotten on waking. Although we endlessly strive to clean and launder them, they remain keepers of our memories, dreams and tears.
Studio update 2023
Having completed our extensive renovations on the house I have now managed to reclaim my studio as a workspace.
I am currently preparing a new body of work for an exhibition in Stroud from 26th September to 8th October 2023 – more details to follow.
Reviews
‘Beverly’s work locates a feeling, an emotion, in a material object. The work touches us, causes us to stop and look carefully at the surfaces and in doing so we connect to the losses we have all experienced’
Professor Lesley Millar on the exhibition The Language of Grief: cloth as a metaphor for loss. James Hockey Gallery, UCA Farnham, UK. 2016
Torn Apart: exploring emotional barriers, Solo show at Lansdown Gallery, Stroud
See Torn Apart gallery for images of work from the exhibition. An ‘In Conversation’ event was held in the gallery and recorded please click here to view the recording.