Pairings II: Conversations and Collaborations: GROUP EXHIBITION CO-CURATED BY ALICE KETTLE
Stroud International Textile Festival
Alice Kettle (textiles/stitch (David Gates (furniture maker) and Jane Webb (text and print)
Collaborative collection of works 2012
Alice Kettle (textiles/stitch (David Gates (furniture maker) and Jane Webb (text and print)
Collaborative collection of works 2012
Pairings II: Conversations and Collaborations was the sole exhibition of the Stroud International Textile Festival in 2012, and marked a continuation of the Pairings project initiated by Alice Kettle and Alex McErlain in 2009. The project aimed to create dialogue between makers and materials in order to encounter alternative perspectives and reflect back on individual practice.
Pairings II: Conversations and Collaborations brought together partnerships of makers who worked without preconditions and in the spirit of improvisation. Collaboration raised questions of ownership, tested established working methods, and negotiated how creative voices might resonate or clash. The resulting works emerged from this process of mixed dialogue. The artefacts—whether individual pieces or collections—represented parallel or shared explorations of materials, practices, and creative identities that were fluid, experimental, and evolving.
The artists featured were Alice Kettle who paired with David Gates and Jane Webb; Ismini Samanidou who paired with Sharon Blakey; Kate Egan who paired with Vanessa Cutler; Dawn Mason working with Dr Nigel Hurlstone, Shelly Goldsmith working with Annie Shaw, Jane McKeating collaborating with Jilly Morris, and Janet Haigh with Rachel Kelly.
'Collaborating is hard but extraordinary. It feels like a tough and negotiated relationship with new thoughts and materials where I draw out something new about the nature of my own visual language, which is defined by glimpes into anothers.' Alice Kettle
The Pairings project originated at Manchester School of Art with the aim of bringing together makers from different craft specialisms and institutions to collaborate on joint projects, thereby extending and developing creative and research practices. Following the initial exhibition in 2010, at the Special Collections Gallery, Manchester Metropolitan University, Pairings subsequently toured six UK venues, culminating at Contemporary Applied Arts, London, in 2013. The wider project encompassed individual initiatives and linked projects involving over 40 participants, alongside an international conference hosted by Manchester School of Art, which spawned the publication ‘Collaboration through Craft’ published by Bloomsbury in 2013.
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