with Candida Stevens Gallery
Poppy by Alice Kettle is a memorial piece made in honour of women refugees around the world and the exaggerated isolation of refuge. Since 2017 Kettle has been working with groups of refugees, with the making of her epic work Thread Bearing Witness for The Whitworth in 2018, consisting of three monumental pieces made with refugees from Syria, Iran, Pakistan and Uganda. The sudden termination of international travel in 2020 saw an end to these exchanges and a change occurred in Kettle’s practice. The focus of her work shifted and for the first time in her career, her focus was a personal one. Suddenly alone, she started to make work in response to her immediate surroundings in Somerset. Having recently moved to the countryside she experienced a new awareness of her environment and the delicate balance between humanity and nature. The new body of work, entitled ‘Thread Bound’ depicts the person negotiating their relationship with the environment, the work is concerned with addressing the importance of the reciprocal relationship of humanity with nature so that there is no dominance of humanity. The figure becomes blended with nature, a new kind of togetherness that was occurring for the artist personally.
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