We are delighted to announce that this exhibition will take place at the 2024 Saltaire Arts Trail, having been postponed in 2023.
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The loom has been central to storytelling for centuries, although usually political and religious propaganda hanging from the walls of castles and cathedrals. Chrissie Freeth’s work continues this tradition but transforms small personal moments, fragile memories, and unconfronted experiences into large-scale handwoven, contemporary tapestries.
Chrissie plays with traditional iconography and a personal vocabulary of symbolism to build her narratives, and her work focuses on the skills of the medieval weaver when the medium was at its zenith and an art form in its own right, rather than as later, an imitator of others. Although medieval tapestries remain a foundational inspiration and academic interest her work re-imagines them for contemporary relevance. Chrissie works on a traditional upright loom in her workroom in Saltaire, where she will work one to two thousand hours to weave a single tapestry. She works with a cotton warp and a woollen weft she hand-dyes herself.
Previously Chrissie’s work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, in Artapestry6, a triennial that showcases the best contemporary tapestry weaving in Europe and she has been shortlisted for the Cordis Prize, the most prestigious prize for contemporary tapestry. She has studied medieval tapestries in collections across Europe and in the States as a Churchill Fellow and in 2022 had a solo exhibition at Ripon Cathedral.
