Catherine Hill Cheshire, United Kingdom

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I am a textile artist working in hand-embroidered text. Each piece begins as writing, which I then embroider in vintage red Sylko thread, with each stitch recreating the rhythm of my own handwriting. My work documents the everyday - food, voices and social history - rooted in my Lancashire childhood. It is held in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

My practice explores imagery through the interplay of words and dialect, using language as both narrative and visual texture. Working in hand embroidery, I document the everyday - food, voices and social history. Each piece begins as writing. I compose the narrative first - short sentences, fragments of speech, the essence of a memory - then translate it into stitch, with each stitch recreating the rhythm of my own handwriting. I stitch with vintage Sylko thread in Turkey Red and Scarlet, and red runs throughout the work as a reference to the Lancashire red rose.

My source material is the county where I grew up, one of six children on the edge of the moors. Much of it comes from the stories of mill life I heard from older relatives in broad dialect. Alongside personal memory, including the summer of 1976, I respond to Lancashire poetry and to contemporary events such as the Covid-19 pandemic. In this way, individual memory becomes a record of a shared past.

A recent body of work moves beyond my Lancastrian childhood. Developed during a residency in the Medina of Fes, Morocco, it comprises four hand-stitched text pieces, each composed in English, then translated and stitched in Arabic script.

My work is held in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. It has been exhibited across the UK and internationally, including New York, Germany, Switzerland and Australia, and features in three published books, including Life Stories by Ali Ferguson.