a solo exhibition from Molly Lester…
Private View: Thursday 5th September 2024 17:00 - 20:00
Opening Hours: Friday 6th - Sunday 8th September 2024 12:00 - 18:00
Location: Nunhead Cemetery Chapel
BOOKING IS NOT ESSENTIAL
This exhibition is part of the Summer series from the FLP x Friends of Nunhead Cemetery Curatorial Program.
For her first solo exhibition, Molly has produced a new body of work in collaboration with the Feminist Lecture Program and Friends of Nunhead Cemetery. ‘The world to the eel is a net' responds to the unique context of Nunhead Cemetery and traces the connections between technology, ecology, and heritage. The show centers around a folk tale, reimagined by Molly to poke fun at our overly hubristic assumption that technology belongs to us and that in creating it, we elevate ourselves above the messy unpredictability of nature.
Comprising large-scale quilted works and an installation of soft sculptures, 'The world to the eel is a net' situates itself within the landscape of English folk customs and acts as much as a modern mummers play or pantomime as it does an exhibition. The performers - a nun, morris dancer, football hooligan and policeman - gleefully move across the quilt and out into the chapel, finding themselves perilously entangled within the more-than-human world.
Molly has employed traditional textile crafts to create the works that, in their familiarity as objects of the home, feel comforting and perhaps a little kitsch. Their mundanity is subverted by a black comedy woven through the show, where unexpected moments of gore and violence are juxtaposed with delicate patch-working and benign stitched smiles.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Molly Lester (She/Her) is a textile artist based in South East London. She works primarily with traditional quilting techniques to create intricate pictorial patchworks and installations. Her work often centres around ideas of Englishness, considering what it means today by looking to the past. Her previous projects have explored these themes through historical events such as the Bronze Age Beaker people, the draining of marshlands, and the invention of Bovril.
Alongside her art practice Molly works in the heritage craft sector, hand sewing ecclesiastical garments and furnishings.
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/mollylester_art/