Jacy Wall

Talking about this work Jacy Wall said: "This tapestry is part of a series that originated with an unusual blue green wool child's dress that I encountered at the Whitworth Museum in Manchester, whilst researching a project about mending. It was clear from the adaptations, the rough darning, the embroidered patches in russet and yellow, the fading and staining, that it had clothed more than one child during its lifetime. Despite this evidence of hard wear, this tiny dress is still infused with the life and joy of a small child, and at the same time is also intensely poignant, as it had been found in the tomb of the last child to wear it, in Egypt, over 1000 years ago.

"Initially the work I made about the dress was in direct response to the visual interventions of mending, but something about the way the main blues and greens had faded and worn was very evocative, and I took these colours into these two pieces, increasingly simple and abstract, still rooted in that child's dress, whilst also looking for a wider context.

"I dye all the colours I use, constantly mixing and adjusting tones rather as a painter might. I enjoy quietly challenging the basic grid structure of weaving in order to find an extra sensitivity of line. I also often cut into and re-construct work, which risks unravelling it, but this process can give my work a sense of other lives, and of the extreme fragility of navigating this unpredictable world."