PROJECTS

Curator - Two Bedford Street from December 2022 ongoing

Event organiser - Wool Week Stroud 2022 + curator floccus exhibition 27 Sept / 8 Oct 2021

Curator/artist - Severn worlding SVA July 2022

November 2021 - ‘Sheep Tales’ at the Being Human Festival 2021 (Museum in the Park, Stroud) 13 & 14 November

https://beinghumanfestival.org/festival-events/region/7633

Curator/artist INVOKING ABSENCE (Hallidays Mill, Chalford) 3-26 September 2021

Event organiser - Wool Week Stroud 2021 (multi-venues Stroud) 27 Sept / 3 Oct 2021 -

Art Project: Sabrina Traces, Sharpness, Gloucestershire

Curator: Incendiary (touring exhibition) Pound Arts, Corsham (March-August 2020)

Curator Residency: Pilotenkueche, Leipzig (October - December 2019)

Residency: Yörük - Eye of the Wind, Alpedrinha, Portugal (September 2019)

Curator: Material Flow, Stroud (September 2019)

Curator: Incendiary Stroud, (February 2019)

Curator: KINdoms Garden Room Gallery, Dartington, Totnes (11 Sept-17 Oct 2018)

Curator: KINdoms - textiling with the more-than-human Fringe Arts Bath, Bath (May 2018)

Film Collaboration: Cold Water Wash (60 sec film challenge, Stroud Film Festival 2018)

Curator: Red Thread Project Part I - Sladebank Woods community embroidery project. Exhibited at 'Honouring the divine feminine' Landsdowne Gallery, Stroud 5th - 10th March 2018

Curator: A stitch in time - Red Thread Project Part II - Atelier Open Studios (May 2018)

Film clip: Zephyr

zephyr | ˈzɛfə | noun1 literary a soft gentle breeze. 2 [mass noun] historical a fine cotton gingham. • [count noun] a very light article of clothing. ORIGIN late Old English zefferus, denoting a personification of the west wind, via Latin from Greek zephuros ‘(god of the) west wind’. Sense 1 dates from the late 17th century. (OED)

The Sabrina Traces project commenced with a visit to Sharpness on the Summer Solstice 2020. The bounty of cherries, washed up wood, plant life, silt, mud and the strong water currents quickly transformed into an ongoing project. The ancient deity of the river Sabrina or Hafren (Welsh) / Sabren was drowned by the orders of Gwendolen (executed) or willingly matyred herself and her mythology and spirit is at home in the Severn river and estuary.

This project is currently in the research stage, this is a short clip. In the clip, the canvases are being washed in the river at high tide and on a full moon. The wind blocks any dialogue, so in this sense it is a little more than ‘a soft gentle breeze’ but the reference to cotton remains.

Project: Sabrina Traces

Summer Solstice to Autumn Equinox 2020

This project took place over three months, from the Summer Solstice to the Autumn Equinox. I visited when I could which wasn’t daily but regularly enough to see the river and its tides in different states. I was intrigued by the goddess ‘Sabrina’ whose name the river holds (Hafren/Sabren) and quickly focused on the mythology surrounding the river.

The river’s agency is immense, its bounty ongoing. I wanted to explore this sense of continued connection to the spirit of the river, not as something that exists in the past only but in the unexpected industrial spots like Sharpness where we found so many cherry trees to be freely picked. What joy!

There were always pieces of driftwood and other shipping materials washed up on the tideline and the silt is so fine that walking on the mudflats is like stepping into quicksand at times. It is not a river or tidal lands to take lightly.

Ritualis (2020)

Ritualis Ingrid Pumayalla and Patricia Brien — Ritualis
Ingrid Pumayalla and Patricia Brien

RED THREAD PROJECT

A women's collective art project for the roundhouse at SLADEBANK WOODS, STROUD

The Red Thread Project PART I
Sladebank hosts several community groups including the Red Hearth, the weekly women's group, Wolf Sisters, Moon Daughters and mothers. Inspired by these different groups I inititiated a small project to insulate and embellish the roundhouse space with woollen padding and red woollen thread. The woollen panels had been gifted to Kesty Jakes the holder of the land and community. The idea was to create a practical and fine wall hanging with the ‘voices’ of the community. Women and girls of different sewing skills levels joined in stitching something of themselves onto the woollen panels which were then stitched together to form three wool panels.
As part of my researcher / artist in residency at Atelier, Stroud, Monday evenings became the spill out sessions to complete the work.

Initiated / curated: Patricia Brien with Kesty Jakes

Four of five panels stitched & embroidered by over 40 women and girls associated with the Sladebank Woods community, Stroud. Exhibited at 'Honouring the Divine Feminine', Landsdown Gallery, Stroud. Dates: 5th - 10th March, 2018 as part of the In… — Four of five panels stitched & embroidered by over 40 women and girls associated with the Sladebank Woods community, Stroud. Exhibited at 'Honouring the Divine Feminine', Landsdown Gallery, Stroud. Dates: 5th - 10th March, 2018 as part of the International Women's Day (week) celebrations.

Red Thread Project installed at 'Honouring the Divine Feminine', Stroud (March 5th - 10th, 2018)

KINships

Textiling with the more-than-human

This project was an initial 'summer travelling' piece after I received Sabine Kussmaul's elastics kit and an invitation to work with them in my own practice. Sabine is a UK-based German artist (www.sabinekussmaul.com) who's work features sketching, video, photography and the natural world. My work with the elastics was an exploration of the game of 'elastics' that I played as a child where several children would hold the elongated elastic band and we would skip, jump, and flip through the bendy elastic lines, the level of difficulty rising as the elastic band wound it's way up our bodies in synchronicity. It was super fun!

In this instance, as part of my practice with the more than human world, I am playing with water, air, plantlife, temperature and sunlight on the banks of the Niers in NL where we visit regularly. It is a place of much significance for my partner who comes from this part of the world.

KINshipsElastics with the Niers - pass it on (Film still)Patricia Brien, January 2018Image: Jacques Cop — **KINships**
**Elastics with the Niers - *pass it on* (Film still)**
Patricia Brien, January 2018
Image: Jacques Cop

KINships

Elastics with the Niers - pass it on (Film still)

Patricia Brien, 2017

Image: Jacques Cop

A STITCH IN TIME

Red Thread Project PART II

A stitch in time is a live installation curated by Patricia Brien exploring real or fabricated connections to clothes. Participants may project into the past or forward into the future finding people, places, experiences and narratives that are embodied in an object of clothing.

As part of this live project participants are asked to bring along a piece of clothing or textile accessory that has significance - or indeed no personal significance - and stitch real or imagined holes, stains, tears, or marks to highlight, commemorate, mend or anticipate moments that will feature as the article is worn in the future.

The punctum need not be seen, tucked away inside like a secret or it may be loudly embroidered for the world to see. The audiovisual stories will be live streaming from Atelier Stroud with fellow creators joining the storytelling & stitching at different times from Amsterdam, Melbourne and Bogotá.

Dates: May 5, 6, 12 & 13 / Hours: 11:00 - 13:00 (GST) / Place: Atelier Stroud

http://www.atelierstroud.co.uk

PLACE, RITUAL, MATERIAL: MELBOURNE (SPRING 2012-13)

PROJECT: Spiritus Loci

Spiritus Loci is the collaborative project designed and curated by Patricia Brien as part of her MA (Design) Textiles. Eight Melbourne-based textile/fashion designers & artists of various specialisations, sought individual relationships to local meaningful nature spots throughout the season of spring using the material qualities of hemp and the narratives of place. Artists: Claire Beale, Patricia Brien, Gabriella Ferrante, Kate Kennedy, Emma Lynas, Tasmin Pascal, Ria Soemardjo and Ilka White.

The film sought to document the participants' rituals and is a reflection on place, meaning and textile artefacts.

A short film collaboration for Spiritus Loci shot and edited by Karan Jones and Amanda Magnano.

Spiritus Loci from Karan Jones on Vimeo.