Connect. Reveal. Conceal

Make Hauser & Wirth’s summer exhibition in London, ‘Connect. Reveal. Conceal’, presents distinct explorations in material practice and thinking of three artists. Through an expanded study of textiles, each communicates a culturally familiar visual language, moving fluidly between the everyday and the imagined, suggestion and intent, sense and memory of touch. The meeting of the maker’s hand with the instinctive and skilled application of process and technique, elicits works imbued with meaning and metaphor. The exhibition is an invitation for visitors to consider the symbolic importance and agency of textiles together with the tacit knowledge that unites hand, eye and mind with the body and lived experience.

Celia Pym explores damage and repair, working with garments that belong to individuals as well as items in museum archives, revealing her extensive experience with the spectrum and stories of damage. For Pym, the process of repairing a treasured garment is a form of nurturing. Time and memory are embodied in a person’s clothing and Pym’s visible acts of care and mending preserve and memorialize lives and relationships.

Amy Revier’s broad practice considers how textiles can serve as a form of nourishment; binding, wrapping and holding us all in a secure state from birth to death, through the everyday and ceremonial moments. Woven garments and complex structures act as protective shelters, a form of architecture that houses the body, our minds and our innermost selves.

Donna Lynch (Studio Ashay) creates wearable and sculptural works, intricately layered, pleated and appliqued. Understanding the relationship between shape and the movement of cloth and thread, her pieces suggest a fluidity and confidence of line. Lynch’s two-dimensional fabric studies reveal a process of deconstruction and reconstruction, an unpicking of a tailored formal approach towards raw and organic explorations.

About the Artists

Amy Revier
Amy Revier is an artist living and working between London, UK and Austin TX. Her work is multidisciplinary with a focus on sculpture and handwoven textiles. She is interested in the apparatuses we wear, carry or construct as means of support. Her handwoven coats are often built to wear but also act as conduits in which to transform, to reveal and conceal, as shells and shelters. She explores how the architecture we wrap ourselves in can be a source of nourishment. Now in her 10th year of making handwoven coats, she is looking to deepen the meaning and metaphor of clothing-as-shelter by reworking her pattern shapes into objects that hint at threshold moments of change. She is often process-led and materials-driven, forming works that emphasize evidence of the hand and reference ancient ways of making.

Before launching her woven garments in London, UK, Revier was based in Reykjavik, Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar for Sculpture in 2010. Her garment collections are regularly exhibited in both the US and UK, with her work having been featured in The New York Times, Financial Times and various other international publications. Recent exhibitions and site-specific installations include: Negative Capability, Blue Projects, Blue Mountain School, London, UK (2023); Nets, Hornton Street, London, UK (2022); Common Thread, New Art Centre, Roche Court, Wiltshire, UK (2022); The Waves, Jermyn Street, London, UK (2018) and The Devil’s Cloth, Blue Mountain School, London, UK (2016).

Celia Pym
Celia Pym is an artist living and working in London, UK. She has been exploring damage and repair in textiles since 2007. Working with garments that belong to individuals as well as items in museum archives, she has extensive experience with the spectrum and stories of damage, from small moth holes to larger accidents with fire. Her interests concern the evidence of damage and how repair draws attention to the places where garments and cloth wear down and grow thin. In clothing, this is often to do with use and how the body moves. She explores the difficulties of mending other people’s clothes, the materials used for mending and making damage visible. Pym’s tools are scissors, yarn and a sharp needle.  ‘Darning is small acts of care and paying attention. The damage, in a way, does the work for me,’ she explains.  ‘I respond to it. The mending is slow work to hold the damage in place.’

Pym’s work has been exhibited internationally in Waste Age, The Design Museum, London, UK (2021); On Happiness: Tranquility and Joy, Wellcome Collection, London, UK (2021); Siblings, Trading Museum, CDG, Paris, France (2020); Sewing Box for the Future, Victoria & Albert Museum, Dundee, Scotland, UK (2020 – 2021); and Material Matters, Textilmuseum, St Gallen, Switzerland (2020). In 2017, she was shortlisted for the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize and the inaugural Loewe Craft Prize. Pym is a visiting lecturer in Mixed Media Textiles at The Royal College of Art, London, UK.

Donna Lynch (Studio Ashay)
Based in Frome, UK, designer Donna Lynch’s informal ready to wear collection focuses on traditional pattern cutting and bespoke tailoring techniques, like any true fashion and textile atelier. In keeping with her wider ethos, the pieces are left raw-edged and unfinished. Embracing the prospect of refitting and altering, the collection works against the thought of seasonal fast fashion, instead creating clothes that work in all seasons, often repeating cuts in different textiles. Inspired by different cultures and modern day living, Lynch has based her hand-crafted pieces on the past, the present and the repetition of nature.

Donna Lynch studied at the London College of Fashion, London, UK, Chelsea College of Arts, London, UK and The Royal College of Art, London, UK, before working with designers in London, Paris and New York.

About Make Hauser & Wirth
Make Hauser & Wirth is a dedicated space for contemporary making and the crafted object, committed to showcasing some of the world’s best emerging and established artist-makers. Make is a natural extension of the wider Hauser & Wirth gallery ethos, embracing art, craft, gardens, food and architecture. Since launching in 2018 in Somerset, UK, Make has presented work by over 80 artist-makers and provided valuable insights into material-led processes and the rich narratives of their practices. In addition to presentations in London, UK and Zurich, Switzerland, Make continues its international program in Southampton NY.

Works exhibited by Make embrace material truth, provenance, sustainability and the value of emotional engagement with the handmade. In addition to a varied exhibition program, Make has hosted practical workshops, discussions and studio visits to expand learning and engagement with makers and global craft organizations.

Image: Installation view, ‘Connect. Reveal. Conceal,’ Make Hauser & Wirth London, 2023. Photo: Dave Watts