Stitched up: How three artists transform recycled fabric into art

“My favourite fabric is anything that has been recycled. Most of the fabric that I use comes from clothing. I like that the textiles I use come from different parts of the world and have had a previous life.”

Fyfe is one of three textile artists whose pieces are showcased in “Piecework,” a small but hugely satisfying exhibition at The Assembly Gallery. She is joined by Andrew McPhail and Urmas Lüüs. All three artists have exhibited extensively.

The exhibition’s title originates in the industrial practice of paying workers for the pieces of work they produce, rather than for the number of hours worked. And coincidentally, artists are rarely paid for the time it takes to make a piece of art, just for the art itself.

In addition to working with fabric, Fyfe paints, draws, makes collages and has freelanced as a calligrapher. Her interest in fabric as a material for art had an almost serendipitous start 16 years ago.

“While preparing for a painting show at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, I had the idea to stretch a sweater over canvas,” she says. “This led to the creation of a body of textile works that were shown alongside my paintings.”

Fyfe’s “Verdant” is an abstract composition in which four horizontals of varying heights enclose quadrilaterals cut out of plain and striped fabric, machine-stitched together, and stretched over canvas.

The pieces in each band are taller than they are wide. Varieties of green dominate, interspersed with narrower, darker strips, most of them horizontally striped.

“I often choose stretch or knit fabric because of the amount of play or tension in it,” she says. “I can manipulate the patterns when I stretch them over canvas.”

One of the perks of a stitched piece is that the seams are part of the composition. So in “Verdant” they subtly add more vertical and horizontal lines.

“What I like best about working with fabric is that it gives me the flexibility to make changes before sewing it together,” Fyfe says. “Placing or draping fabric over canvas allows me to consider options of colour, texture and composition. It can be continuously moved, adjusted, placed and replaced.”

McPhail is another avid fabric recycler. An installation, performance and textile artist, he’s made art for most of his life. For several years now, he has been working on a series called “THIS IS NOT AN AIDS QUILT.”

“Nothing” belongs to this series. This wordy wall hanging, made from recycled bedsheets, is both austere and extravagant. To begin with, the arrangement is restricted to black and white rectangles.

That’s the austerity. But this is also an attention-grabbing biggie. Moreover, the fabric is floral rather than plain. And then there’s all the tiny black sequins that shimmer and form words in both majuscule and minuscule letters, each word sewn into the centre of a white rectangle. Visual art meets poetry here in its focus on the shapes and sounds of words.

“Nothing” just happens to be one of the words in the title of a recent exhibition in Tallinn, Estonia, by Lüüs, a prominent Estonian artist.

McPhail connected with him last fall when he stayed in Tallinn as the recipient of the 2023 Nordic Artist Exchange. The exchange was made possible through Hamilton’s Cotton Factory, the Hamilton Arts Council and the Estonian Artists’ Association.

Lüüs is an interdisciplinary artist and writer whose interests include installation, performance, textile and jewelry art, video, photography and theatre. Some of his creations comprise faces and masks, five of which he sent to this exhibition.

Each mask recalls a small doily decorated with hand-embroidered flowers. But Lüüs has subverted the look of this familiar household object. He’s added machine-embroidered stylized facial features that pierce the fabric and contrast sharply with the old-fashioned floral motifs.