Sourcing, collecting, drawing and making are core motivations in the work. Clothing raw materials are sourced from second hand clothes shops, markets and online. These items are selected and deconstructed through methods of cutting, unpicking and ripping. Free-hand weaving techniques are developed through physical, sensory, emotional and psychological engagement with selected clothing. The speculative play around the visible and invisible history of the raw material and the internal and external surfaces all contribute to these responses. There is a seductive and obsessive drive with the raw materials, which fuels the desire to make and physically interact with the garments.

Weaving is both language and method to reconstruct / re-invent these raw materials exploring ideas around re-telling/ re-working histories, re-claiming / re-configuring female body image. Weaving by tradition is slow and labour intensive. Time is used as part of Browns process. The time the work takes to make and the experience that is embedded into the work, is part of the end result. Works develop over two stages; first stage weaving takes place in the studio on an egar frame loom. Second stage is when weaves are cut loose of the loom and transferred to a space where works are installed, extended and realised.

Current works are using multiple selections of clothing, exploring bodily gestures as an extension of an emotion. There are themes around the unfinished and unresolved, meaning that works has are in a constant state of ‘becoming’.

Lucy Brown studied Textiles at Goldsmiths College. Since 1995 has been exhibiting, lecturing and contributing to arts education programmes in galleries, museums, schools and colleges. In 1999 she was awarded the Crafts Council Setting Up Grant. Angel Row Gallery commissioned The Brides Clothes, now part of the Contemporary Textile Collection at Nottingham Castle Museum supported by the Contemporary Arts Society.