‘Cradle'
Selby HI
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 textile teacher and practising textiles artist, Selby had grown up around textiles and learned 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 learned 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 are 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 whom 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 about 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, connection, and 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 1970s, challenged the sexist dismissal of textile art as ‘women’s craft’.
This challenge to the art world continues, led by artists 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.
You can listen to our chat by clicking this little button.
Read more about the process of putting the show together below.
The show is at Reem Gallery Soho, in Ham Yard Village and is on until the 17th of September. The full collection is available here on the Reem Gallery website.
Install shots by Ezra Jolly and Mick O’Conn
