London Textile Month Exhibition: Stitching Praxis
09/09/2026 11:00 am – 13/09/2026 6:00 pm
Presented at the Batsford Gallery, ‘Stitching Praxis‘ brings together a body of textile works that use hand stitch as both memoir and material language.
Hand stitch is used as cipher and memoir in this exhibition of textiles by Claire Wellesley-Smith. Place is positioned through the materials used and their connection to long-term creative health and heritage engagement projects in the former industrial textile areas of northern England. Using dyes produced in community gardens and former industrial sites, improvised stitch marks are added to these durational pieces over time – each mark a metaphor for place, context and feeling.
Stitching Praxis was first exhibited at the Biennial of Textile Art BIEN (Slovenia) and this body of work is being shown in the UK for the first time.
Dr Claire Wellesley-Smith is an artist, writer and researcher based in West Yorkshire, UK, working internationally. Claire has spent over twenty years building a practice across visual arts, academic research, writing and curation. Her socially engaged projects are often long-term engagements alongside communities in former areas of industrial textile production in the UK and Europe, employing textiles as a medium to carry stories, heritage narratives and the geographies of making. Her textile books published by Batsford, Slow Stitch (2015) and Resilient Stitch (2021), remain influential in the field. Recent projects include The Synthetic Revolution, a major curatorial project for the British Textile Biennial and Connective Material at Museum Dr Guislain, Belgium. Her book Reflective Stitch is published by Batsford, September 2026.
When: Wednesday 9—Sunday 13 September, 11-6p.m.
Where: Batsford Gallery, 266 Hackney Rd, London, E2 7SJ
Price: Free admission
Please note, this is a free event. To reserve your place, please follow the instructions on the Selvedge website.
Top image : Photograph by Carolyn Mendelsohn.
Additional images : Artwork by Claire Wellesley-Smith, photographed by Michael Wicks, from Reflective Stitch, published by Batsford.
