Alice Fox

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Previously shown in

Fibre: structure and surface 2022

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Earth materials 2023

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Sustainability is at the heart of Alice’s practice. The desire to take an ethical approach has driven a shift from using conventional art and textile materials into exploring found objects, gathered materials and natural processes. The work that Alice makes is process led. She gathers the materials that are available to her, testing, sampling and exploring them to find possibilities using her textiles-based skill set and techniques borrowed from soft basketry. Alice makes small sculptural pieces, bringing different materials together to form intimate tactile surfaces and structures.

 

Establishing her allotment garden as a source of materials for her work has provided a space where Alice can experiment, exploring the potential of what grows there, planted and wild, as well as other materials found on the plot. Materials are produced, gathered and processed seasonally and are hard-won: There may only be a small batch of each type of usable material each year. As a result, each bundle of dandelion stems, sweetcorn fibre or hand processed flax is enormously precious by its scarcity and the meaning attached to it through its sourcing and hand-processing. Alongside the use of materials for 3D making, Alice gathers plant material to make inks, dyes and stains. This is a ‘bricolage’ approach to making: using what is at hand on the plot and exploring the materiality and potential of those materials within the context of her own making skills.