Embroidery Adds Textured Narratives to the Subjects of Flore Gardner’s Stitched Photographs



All photographs © Flore Gardner, shared with permission

With a background in drugs, Edinburgh-based artist Flore Gardner fosters a artistic follow that explores the physique and its untapped potential. She works in an array of mediums from printmaking and ink-based illustrations to mixed-media installations and fiber, pushing the bounds of human anatomy into the realm of the absurd or subversive. Regardless of the fabric, every work facilities on a main curiosity in drawing and makes use of the identical methods and rules that fill the pages of her notebooks.

One among Gardner’s sequence, titled (Her)Tales, overlays classic, black-and-white pictures largely sourced from flea markets with vibrant stitches. Because the title suggests, the gathering focuses totally on girls, and the embroidered parts obscure faces with dense patches, add dimension to a topic’s physique, or spotlight their figures by drawing a distinction to the backdrop.

Revitalized with colour and texture, the portraits and posed group pictures tackle a brand new narrative with the artist’s thread drawings and “modify the ‘actuality’ of the photographs, revealing hidden issues beneath (eg. unseen bare our bodies below marriage ceremony garments, invisible haloes, hidden ideas) or quite the opposite hiding sure particulars (threads shroud the inevitably lifeless figures or ‘ghosts’).” She explains additional:

The needle is an instrument for hurting and for therapeutic—{a photograph} (or human pores and skin) may be broken by its remedy and concurrently repaired/recreated. This needle makes a whole lot of little holes in every {photograph}, as soon as a treasured object, and these, together with the threads, remodel the flat, easy, untouchable photographic assist right into a aid floor, which may be touched and even, in a sure method, learn like Braille.

Gardner at the moment is engaged on a publishing undertaking funded by Creative Scotland and a collaborative efficiency that might be introduced at Edinburgh Fringe this August.

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