Charlotte Edey | Echolocation

PUBLIC Gallery is delighted to present Charlotte Edey’s debut solo exhibition Echolocation, revealing a new series of work spanning drawing, embroidery, woven tapestry and silk georgettes.

These new works build and expand on themes that have interested Edey throughout her career - identity, spirituality and femininity – in order to explore how we navigate our environment. Departing from depictions of a female form inhabiting a space, in this new series feminine iconography forms the entire environment. Edey comments:

‘Employing organic symbolism and the traditionally gendered mediums of embroidery, weaving and textile, the fabric of the worlds is shaped and informed by the idea of femininity and how it intersects with the multiple facets of identity. Anthropomorphic landscapes and atmospheres punctuated by curls and waves speak to expanding beyond the body.’

The subjects of her recent works inhabit what Edey describes as a ‘dual dimension’: a transitional space where opposites meet existing in delicate equilibrium. The works are drawn from the artist’s consciousness exploring how we interact with the world around us. Says Edey:

‘Much of the exhibition is concerned with articulating and reconciling conflict. The title, ‘Echolocation’ describes using echoes to understand your environment, alluding to exploration of the inner world and its connection to the universal. The recurrent use of blue reflects the partition between the spiritual and the artificial, between the sublime and the uncanny.’ 

Across the series a desire for harmony is communicated through curvilinear landscapes and symmetry of form. Edey’s attempt to resolve divisions also manifests within the physical nature of the works. Distinctions between synthetic and natural processes are blurred as drawings are translated via a digital jacquard loom to woven tapestry, displayed alongside hand-embroidery and hand-weavings.