TEXTILE SOCIETY EVENT

This talk explores McVetis’ 15-year fascination and obsession with a single stitch technique and how the individual expressive properties of this process have enabled him to examine his connection to material and place.

The mapping of space and marking time and form are central themes. Using a range of media, McVetis explores how time and place, experienced and constructed. Ideas are often developed in response to or created specifically to a moment, visualising and making this a tactile and tangible object. Drawing as an act is what occurs in everything that he does. Drawing as a dialogue; a process that goes beyond the flat surface and into space around.

McVetis’ practice is deeply rooted in process and hand embroidery. He records time and space through multiples of dots, lines, and crosses. These meticulously rendered stitches reflect a preoccupation with the repetitive nature, exploring the subtle differences that emerge through ritualistic and habitual making. The inscribed stitches mark the hand’s rhythms, a delicate performance of obsessive intricacy, refinement, and physical activity. They record human presence, time and decay, each stitch acting as a marker for lived time, an embodiment of thought and patience.

Time permitting there will be a Q&A. We invite you to submit a question when booking your ticket.

Richard McVetis uses a range of media, including drawing, installation, and textiles, to explore our perception of space and time. His minimalist work is an endless exploration, not just of form but of the reclamation and potential of process and repetition — a step-by-step examination of perspective and scale which unearths the human condition.

Finalist of the 2018 Loewe Craft Prize, Richard’s artwork has been celebrated in galleries, art fairs, and museums across the world including Iceland, Ukraine, Pakistan, South Korea, UAE, and the USA. Richard has been a finalist for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2011 and 2017, a finalist for the Cheongju International Craft Prize in 2015 and was selected to be part of the British Pavilion, Form + Motion at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in 2017. Richard’s first solo show will be at the Crafts Study Centre in March 2022.

McVetis is a graduate of the Royal College of Art (2008) and lives and works in London.