Profile

Lucy Brown uses a mixed palette of old, unwanted, second-hand and vintage clothing, hair and personal artefacts as raw material. Works take form in woven installations, anti-form sculptures, site-specific interventions and individual pieces. Narratives explored engage with social issues surrounding body, dress, women’s history, making skills and nostalgia.

Sourcing, collecting, drawing and making are core motivations in the work. Raw materials are sourced from second hand clothes shops, markets and online. It is the raw materials embodied history and memory that interests Brown, its previous existence. 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 materials exploring ideas around re-telling/ re-working histories, re-claiming / re-configuring female body image.

Installation and anti-form 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 BA Hons Textile Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since graduating in 1995 Lucy has continually made work for exhibitions, commissions and has developed short and long term education projects for arts organisations, schools, colleges and universities. Exhibitions and new work commissions include ‘6th Riga International Textile and Fibre Art Triennial’ 2018 Arsenāls Exhibition Hall, Riga, Latvia; ‘Offerings’ Solo Exhibition 2018. R-Space Gallery Lisburn Northern Ireland; ‘Lace Unveiled’ 2018 Newstead Abbey. Nottinghamshire; ‘Unravelling Nyman’s’, 2012  Nyman’s House and Gardens National Trust UK and ‘Offerings’ Project Space, COLLECT 2012, Saatchi Gallery London UK. Lucy’s work has been reviewed and featured in many publications including ‘Lucy Brown: ‘Secrets she keeps from herself’ On-line published essay by Professor Catherine Harper. 2018 and Warp & Weft by Dr Jessica Hemmings 2012.