The first time I met Selby, having spoken for months over email and Instagram, was just a few weeks ago. She came to see the gallery, the space where she would open her debut solo show: a show that she had agreed to without knowing me, the gallery, or having seen the space. Space, incidentally, the idea of it and the physicality of it, was what our conversations orbited around - her lack of confidence to take up space, as both an artist and a woman (and therefore a woman artist), the space her work takes up now, the space in which she works and inhabits. Space.

It was significant that she hadn’t seen the gallery space.

We sat outside at the set of Parisian-style iron chairs, the little table between us, with our diaries and phones ready. I had questions for her, and she for me, but these were purely logistics. I was aching to ask about her, her work, her art education, her views on this, that, and the other, but I was conscious to save it for the impending studio visit (which would include the recording of a podcast). So, giddy with excitement and the dissipation of nerves at our first meeting, we agreed on a date when Michael (photographer and assistant) and I would visit her in the southeast of London.

The following week, I got up early to grace buses, tubes, and an overground train with my presence before arriving in a disused retail park (the sort of space I am becoming quite accustomed to; artist studios are in a disused retail or industrial park 99% of the time). I stood outside an abandoned Mothercare with a cloudy window that had stacks of boxes and mannequins inside, the backdrop of grey was provided by a mucky slab of MDF shielding the rest of the cavernous space from outside view. Two enormous doors were slid open and Selby stood, radient, at the threshold.

An old warehouse is as you’d expect: enormously high ceilings, an airy lightness, echoing acoustics, and, akin to a casino, an easy place to be totally unaware of the outside world. This particular warehouse was split with MDF boards about 8ft tall into studios of a fairly regular size, accessed by a central walkway/ corridor. Selby’s was three quarters of the way to the back, and on the right, shared with three other artists.

Walking into her studio, and turning in towards her corner of creation was like stepping into wonderland - a woollen wonderland. Cat chairs were placed around, and she quickly pulled up two for us to sit on, a little cat stool in between for me to pop my phone on. Square shelving units were filled with balls of wool, not organised by colour in a way that I could understand and perhaps not organised at all, but neat nonetheless. Pink to-do lists were taped to the wall next to pen drawings of the cat chairs and rolled up wall hanging, with little loose threads, were stacked against the walls.

A week later, and the day that the collection was due to be collected from the studio and brought to the gallery, an enormous downpour overcame the warehouse roof and Selby opened the door to her mdf square box to find puddles inches deep. The works were soaked. I told her to get them in the van anyway, and our abnormally warm gallery space would dry them out over the following days, and thank goodness we had planned for collection a week pre-show opening. The wet, woolly works were transported by a bemused courier and brought in from the rain clad in bin liners. The works were laid out, the AC was turned off, and Selby returned to the studio to mop up.

The works dried fully over the next two days, and everything looks perfect. Cats don’t like the rain typically, but these ones didn’t seem to mind.

Selby graduated in 2019 from Central Saint Martins with a degree in Fine Art. Having specialised in painting (which Fine Art students from CSM will know leaves you open to almost any material and all scales), she honed in on using textiles in her final year. Perhaps it was inevitable, her mother being a textiles teacher and practicing textiles artist, Selby had grown up around textiles and learning skills related to wool, felt and fabric. Textiles represented home, comfort, safety, and a challenge that she had seen overcome by her mother.

Her practice developed most significantly over the first lockdown when she spent around 3 months on a giant wall hanging. The technique used was tufting, a technique she learnt from watching videos on YouTube. This technique of tufting could be done using a machine but she chooses to do it by hand; arduous, physically exhausting labour which helps her to connect fully with her work and with the thoughts and memories that she wrestles with in the creative process.

Her textural works (wall hangings and more recently sculptural furniture) capture physically emotional states of security, safety and comfort, whilst remaining playful and kitsch. The bright oranges, yellows and cobalt blues add a surrealist quality. Neon pink cats reminiscent of childhood characters like Bagpuss and the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. ‘The Beast of Bevendean’, a wall hanging self portrait where Selby cradles in her arms a small black cat, is based on a myth that a panther-like creature roams the land around Brighton (her home town). In this work, Selby has tamed the beast. The beast is now a domesticated kitty cat.

Selby demonstrates exceptional technical and conceptual ability in her work. Inspired by Leonora Carrington and contemporary artists who she is surrounded by, both in person and online, her process incorporates text and drawings before even getting to the studio (she prefers to draw at home). The poems and prose that she writes often lend lines to the titles of her works, but that text is private (partly because she is dyslexic and nervous of sharing it). The emotional and physical experience of being held, of being home, and of feeling safe is carefully woven into each artwork. I wonder if the anxieties of lockdown and the pandemic increased a need in the artist to communicate to herself and others the importance of physical comfort, of connection, and of intimacy with space.

Textile artwork has long been overlooked, and under-appreciated as a form of art.  Often reduced to ‘women’s work’, the skill and artistic nature pushed lower than that of painting, sculpture, or drawing. Weaving, invented as early as 27,000 years ago, is one of the world’s oldest technologies and has been reinvented over the last century by artists who have pushed the boundaries of what can and cannot be considered art. Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro took quilting and sewing, and fuelled by the feminist movement in the 1970’s, challenged the sexist dismissal of textile art as ‘women’s craft’.

This challenge to the art world continues, led by artist’s like Zoe Buckman and Nick Cave, Billie Zangewa and Judith Scott… and now, Selby HI.

‘Cradle’, Selby’s debut solo show, is a collection of works centred around a dining room set of chairs, benches, and a table, with lamps and wall hangings completing the domestic setting. The art invites the viewer to reconsider the place of craft, the domestic labour of women, and children’s fairytales in the gallery space, and Reem Gallery invites you to enter into this conversation.

The show is at Reem Gallery Soho, in Ham Yard Village and is on until the 17th of September. The full collection is available on the Reem Gallery website.