Thread: Group Exhibition
28 March - 16 May 2026

  • UPPER & LOWER GALLERIES

    THE SCHOOLHOUSE

    LONDON

     

    28 March - 16 May 2026

     

    As a Gallery, we are at the forefront of recognising material and process-led art as a significant movement within the cultural landscape of the visual arts. 'Thread' explores the notion that weaving is both a thought or idea, as well as a process of making that speaks to the fundamental interconnectedness of human experience.

     

    This group show is an international survey on contemporary woven work, highlighting how this ancient craft, using a variety materials and a diverse range of innovative techniques, reflects creative community and exchange. This rich approach to weaving signifies our multicultural world through a timeless and poetic language, enabling complex material semantics that transcend modern forms of communication.

     

    Artists: Arko, Dana Barnes, Patrick Bongoy, Ann Coddington, Aude Franjou, Lin Fanglu, Teresa Hastings, Wanbing Huang, Tim Johnson, Taylor Kibby, Alida Kuzemczak-Sayer, Kate MccGwire, Adriana Meunié, Annette Mills, Joana Schneider, Diana Scherer, Wycliffe Stutchbury, Amy Usdin and Lucy Williams.

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    Short Essay by Emma Crichton-Miller

     

    The word “thread” derives from a Germanic word meaning to twist. It refers to the twisting of fibres to make a yarn. And with a yarn you can begin to tell a story. Crossed with another, to make a grid or a knot, or threaded through other materials, it becomes a textile, delivering woven, knitted and stitched cloths and clothing for human beings since 5000BC. Yarn has been a fundamental motor of human civilisation, alongside pottery - an essential creative component of culture across the globe. As a system for organising the material world in the service of ideas, it predates written language, a precedence acknowledged in the word text, taken from the Latin word “texere”, to weave. But more particularly, from the swaddling blankets of a baby to the burial shroud, thread has a unique intimacy with the human body.

     

    It is these associations and long history that the artists in THREAD draw from. Whether their background is in painting, drawing, fashion or tapestry weaving, what has gripped them is the potential of thread to express and embody thoughts and emotions, and, as a line works in drawing, to create a space for the unfurling of stories. These nineteen artists from around the world create thread from materials as diverse as the living roots of plants, iron, rubber, washi paper, bamboo, flax, rooster feathers, recycled fishing nets, recycled viscose, cotton, raffia and reeds. What they share is a commitment to the interrogative potential of their medium, its latent power to question and discover, just as a line of writing sets out to scope the truth and create it anew.

     

     

    Emma Crichton-Miller

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