Ireland again!

I now have another piece in Ireland, the time in the Linen Hall Library, Belfast. I've not visited the library before, so I'll look forward to seeing the exhibition when I go over in April. The exhibition is entitled War-Torn Children and my piece is Her Pillow, the Earth. 

Her Pillow, the Earth         (full image)

This is the work, inspired by a tragic story of a family in Aleppo that I read about in the Independent newspaper online. The whole exhibition is under the aegis of Conflict Textiles and the full details of the article that moved me to make this piece can be found at:-

http://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/search-quilts/fulltextiles/?id=390

Detail with the child.

The figure of the little child is actually from a drawing I had made of Juliette years ago, altered to stand for a Syrian child, or indeed for a child anywhere. The ruined buildings are an interpretation of all those seen in Aleppo on the news night after night. As I stitched, I felt as if the buildings were falling over onto the child and I couldn't stop it happening  -  the powerlessness of watching the terrible violence that the people, including even the youngest children, are having to live through in Syria and elsewhere day after day. 

The fabric sweeping over and round seemed to me like a shroud, the little square pieces, the small desk-tops the children would have sat at in their school classroom.

and then the blood flowed . . .

I have given a paper about my work at the TFTV Conference in Aberystwyth University last week and have been invited to speak at a Symposium on Absence, Presence and Embodiment in the Old College, Aberystwyth. This is in connection with a touring exhibition on the Missing in Mexico and elsewhere  -  very moving and so tragic what some people go through in our world.