two exhibitions

Went to an exhibition in Bury St Edmund's art gallery called Making and Mending, a group of artists using domestic textiles, to explore consumerism and sustainability. our focus on these themes being sharpened by the threat of recession, credit crunch.
The darned cardie connected emotionally, thoughts of time passing, connections with those whom we know who wear cardies. RP has a similar one for gardening - undarned so far, ........but I bought a gorgeous arty one recently, it cost the earth.......oh dear I hope not.
My ma never picked up a darning needle in my life time, thus perhaps my fascination with the stitch in my work, or just that cover lots of space with long fat stitches. Mother always worked and paid other women to make my school dresses etc, her mother was the same, which is an interesting [to me anyway] perspective on the nostalgia for times past when we did make and mend.......

This was the sock exchange, people have been encouraged to bring their socks in and get them stitched I suppose, sort of irritating till I reminded myself to have a sense of humour.
The armchair was very pleasing, with lots of thoughts about how I could customise the grubby one in my shed. It was "mended" with random icons of American culture that had been repeated patterned on an industrial pattern making machine that artists got hold of some time ago.
I think I have seen some of These old cardboard pin sheets, which were presumably sold before plastic boxes became so cheap.
I think there may be some in my favourite junk shop in Hastings where many kitchen drawers have been emptied into plastic bags and sold for 50p each. Sad. I could probably enter some of the bags "as seen" into an exhibition somewhere and someone somewhere would review them...........such is art these days.
In this case the artist has printed a repeat photo of a pin card and stitched it into this patchwork effect wall hanging.
After wandering and clucking around we stitchers went to another textile exhibition round the corner, an excess of treasures.
I name this one a "textile art" exhibition as it was much more heavily textile based, lots of dyed and stitched techniques.
Altho I sometimes find the glibness of contemporary art annoying, I realised I had enjoyed the first exhibition far more, as it stimulated us into discussion and further thoughts.
The second exhibition probably didn't have that intention, I guess it was meant to be more sensual and craft based.
It explored lots of skills , used modern printing and dying techniques and explored design, but it felt heavy and crowded.
There was a evident group ethos even in the variety of the second show, where as "make and mend" felt more individual, except even those works were part of another grouping, the Back to the Future - Green approach...............an agreed group concept, so not so individual. Risk taking but in a comfort zone.