CONNECTING THREADS

 

Curated by Paul Carey-Kent and Christina Niederberger

 

GPS Gallery, Soho – 8 -17 January 2026, opening Thurs 8 January 6-8 pm

 

Curator / artist talks on Sat 17 January, 4 pm onwards

 

Work by Berend Strik, Caroline Achaintre, Christina Niederberger, Debbie Lawson, Hannah Knox, John Walter, Julie Cockburn, Kate Terry, Michael Raedecker, Sam Owen Hull and Tamar Mason

 

 

Wind back 50 years and there was a definite hierarchy in which painting and sculpture were at the top, while textiles were reduced in importance by being categorised as both a craft and a female activity. And the two didn’t mix much. Times have changed: now, an artist might as easily work in textile as any other medium and be taken seriously, or might add the vocabulary of textile art to other media. This show deals with just such connecting threads between media, whether actual or depicted, in the work of eleven artists engaged in processes of interpretation between those previously separate languages and cultures. They provide a wide range of approaches, with each emphasising different aspects.

Over that same fifty years, that matter of self-identity – be it in race, sexuality or gender – has become increasingly fluid. It seems appropriate that the categorisation of art has made a parallel journey. Both the media used and the approaches to using them have become sufficiently fluid that one might well see a common thread that connects them all.

The works shown typically challenge us to identify where textile - or the appearance of textile – ends and other media – painting, sculpture, photography – begin. The intermedia aspect is particularly clear in the work of Kate Terry and Sam Owen Hull.  And the use of materials contributes to not just the look of the work, but also its meaning: Julie Cockburn and Berend Strik add textile to photographic sources to transformative effect. The artists often incorporate reference to the comparative status – at least historically – of textiles seen as a domestic and female zone as against the grander public and male-dominated space of the ‘higher arts’. That is among the concerns of Christina Niederberger and Hannah Knox .  John Walter , Caroline Achaintre and Debbie Lawson share that interest, but take matters in a more theatrical direction. Such combinations also lend themselves to the contrast of natural and manmade in the context of political and environmental issues, as dealt with by Michael Raedecker and Tamar Mason. That, though, that is to concentrate on single aspects of practices which span those categories and others – as is explored in the texts on each artist.

 

The location itself provides a link to Soho's rag trade legacy that has evolved from fabric traders and garment showrooms to flagship boutiques and fashion destination.

 

Berend Strik

                                   

‘Mothers and Snow’, 2025 - Stitched canvas, mixed media textile, 60 x 41 cm

                                   

‘On top’, 2025 - stitched photo, wire, 23 x 14 cm

                    

‘Portrait’, 1994-2024 - Stitched photo with mixed media, 50 x 50 cm

                  

‘Seth Siegelaub's Shirt’, 2024 - Stitched photo with mixed media, 50 x 50 cm

                                 

‘She Moves’, 2003-04 - Stitched C-Print, mixed media textile on canvas, 51 x 42 cm

‘As a photographer’, says Amsterdam-based Berend Strik, ‘I capture, and as an editor of the image, I liberate it. Only then does the photograph gain value as an autonomous entity with presence in the here and now.’ He enlarges and prints photographs onto canvas, then applies various textile techniques to highlight or hide portions of the 2D original. The photographic instant is subject to the interventions of a slower process that takes the image elsewhere – towards three dimensions, towards subconscious revelation or concealment, towards the histories behind them. The viewer is primed to speculate on the meaning. Sometimes – as in the image of a shirt, Strik plays on the nature of thread. At other times he departs from it, as when snow appears in a series about mothers, adding a constructed coldness to the expected sense of shared and warm maternal memories. ‘She Moves’ achieves a different sort of mystery between veiling and unveiling, leaving the subject’s agency open to question – is she hiding or hidden? – whereas the woman ‘On Top’ receives colour emphases in line with her superior positioning: might that – also intervening in the male gaze - be a feminist statement?

Berend Strik (born 1960 in Nijmegen, The Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam. He studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, and participated in the International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York. His book ‘Deciphering the Artist's Mind’ was published by Mercator Fonds in 2020. Strik’s recent solo exhibitions were at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam (2024) and Hopstreet Gallery, Brussels (2025). He is represented by the Tilton Gallery, New York.

 

Caroline Achaintre

                               

‘Helios’, 2025 – wool, 110 x 82 cm

 

Born in France, raised in Germany, and based in England, Caroline Achaintre is a trained blacksmith as well as artist. Her work reflects a comparable diversity of influences: primitivism, European carnival costumes, German Expressionism, science fiction… She works extensively in ceramic as well as textile, typically installing apparent abstractions that morph into hybrid creatures. ‘Helios’ is a tufted hanging – of wool poked through canvas – that edges towards the territory of sculpture, mask or garment, while a wild aspect is encouraged by the suggestion of fur. It could also be seen as a shaped painting, though Achaintre is drawn to how the image exists within the textile, rather than being applied to the surface. The sun is eponymously present, but ‘Helios’ might also be read as a tiger’s head, so tweaking the traditional connection between the sun as divine light with the lion as a symbol of royal and divine authority. Such uncanny oscillations typically originate in watercolours that resemble Rorschach ink tests, the classic sites of interpretative license. What do we take from this definitional elusiveness? We might ponder how we as individuals are formed of complex and multiple identities, not all of which we understand.

Caroline Achaintre (born 1969 in Toulouse, France) was raised in Germany, and lives and works in London. She attended the Kunsthochschule in Halle, then the Chelsea College of Art and Design, and Goldsmiths University of London. Known for her large-scale, hand-tufted textile pieces, ceramics, and works on paper, she is represented von Bartha (Basel, Copenhagen) - with whom she had a solo show at Art Basel in 2025, and by the Paris gallery Art : Concept.

 

Christina Niederberger

‘Undercurrents’, 2025 - Oil on canvas 60 x 70cm

‘Once Upon a Time’, 2025 - oil on canvas, 61 x 91cm

London-based Swiss painter Christina Niederberger explores crossovers between painting and textile. Initially, she developed an affectionate critique of modernist masters by deriving illusory textiles from them, bringing the public-facing, masculine, gestural tradition of heroic modernism into the feminine and domestic sphere:  the traditional hierarchies of art and craft were collapsed onto the same plane to yield a painterly abstraction which lovingly stitched up Picasso, Braque and Leger.  Niederberger was interested in how her paintings develop their own visual appearance in the act of translation itself. In more recent work, her focus has shifted to the languages of weaving and stitching as metaphors for the passing of time and female empowerment, but using the same tiny, illusionist brush marks to mimic those sources so that, from a distance, viewers might easily assume they are looking at a textile. Having pursued this interest initially by interpreting female textile designs into paintings, her most recent works – such as ‘Once Upon a Time’ - increasingly use her own designs and compositions which can allude to the digital notation of computer generated, virtual spaces.

Christina Niederberger (born 1961 in Bern, Switzerland) has been based in London since 1992, where she studied at Heatherleys School of Art, Byam Shaw School of Art and Goldsmiths College, University of London. She followed her MA at Goldsmiths with a PhD exploring the notion of cultural recycling that feeds into her painting practice. She was shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2021 and the John Moores Prize in 2025.

 

Debbie Lawson

 
                                          

‘Beaux Amis’ – carpet and mixed media, 230 x 160 x 30cm

Debbie Lawson is a Scottish artist known for sculptures in which wild animals and flora emerge from traditional patterned carpets. From a feminist perspective, the domestic world and female labour implied by the carpet prove assertively animalistic, and claim a place in the fine art hierarchy.  Lawson lives in rural Kent, surrounded by fields, furniture and fabric. ‘The home has always felt alive to me’, she says, ‘Chairs stretch, animals emerge, and familiar household things begin to move or disguise themselves.’ Thus ‘the ordinary becomes uncanny – a living room can turn into a forest or a vast rolling tundra landscape.’ She cites as influences stories in which inanimate things come to life, and gothic tales, ‘where beauty often hides something wilder underneath. Those narratives taught me that domestic order and wilderness are closer than they seem.’ The patterned carpets she uses are ‘familiar objects in the home, but also suffocating, decorative skins’. When bears and stags appear inside them ‘they seem to be camouflaged, though they rebel against the very fabric of their confinement’. Here the three monkeys are evidently social climbers in the manner of Georges Duroy, the unscrupulous ‘fair friend’ of Maupassant's ‘Bel-Ami’.

Debbie Lawson (born 1966 in Dundee, Scotland) lives and works in Kent. She studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art, fine art at Central Saint Martins, and English Literature at the University of East Anglia. She was recently commissioned to create a solo show at the Rockefeller Center, New York. Lawson is represented by Sargent's Daughters (New York), where she will have her second solo exhibition in April 2026.

 

Hannah Knox

                                        

‘Pink Plaid’, 2022 - Oil on Linen 55 x 70cm

                                      

‘Red Lumberjack with Soft Black’, 2021 - Oil on linen 95 x 70cm

                                   

‘Oxford Blue’, 2025 - Oil on Linen 35 x 45cm

                                   

‘Red and Cream Gingham Shirt’, 2025 - Oil on cradled panel 40 x 30 cm

 London-based Hannah Knox has used a wide variety of materials, including fabrics, but has lately been painting to mimic clothing. Knox explains that she ‘realised that if I folded the shirt (as you might find it in a shop or online) then it could fit exactly the format of the canvas’ - becoming a type of stand-in body. There’s more than fashion here, though, as the series originated in trauma: Knox’s mother passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer, and she suffered a miscarriage – leading to an intimate understanding of the body as a vulnerable vessel, the failings of which we shield.  Knox grew up around clothing: ‘my mum was a fashion designer, and after she died, I found myself with the challenge of what to do with all the garments that she had collected, made, and worn’, says Knox: ‘These empty shells seem to totally embody and represent the person who had worn them.’ The results are paradoxical paintings: figurative without a figure; folded but flat; with shirts made of linen that you can’t wear. The four here might stand in as a family, but they also summon the languages of abstraction that may well have influenced the designs in the first place.

Hannah Knox (born 1978 in London) studied at Middlesex University and the Royal College of Art, London. Her practice involves working with a wide variety of materials across painting and installation. She has lectured at Chelsea School of Art, Oxford Brookes University and UCA Canterbury. Her work can be found on Gertrude, the curated online platform/app connecting emerging artists with buyers and collectors.

 

John Walter

                                        

‘Fist (Paisley)’, 2018 - Hydrographically patterned object and novelty drinking fist, 32cm x 59cm x 15cm

                                            

‘Polymerisation’, 2020 - Fabric, expanding foam filler, gesso, spraypaint, varnish, joke-shop dummies, karabiners, rope, car mats and ribbon, 60 x 60 x 300cm

    

 ‘Appliqué Painting #6 (Shopkins blueberry muffin)’, 2020 - 183 x 193 x 3cm

John Walter describes his transdisciplinary practice as addressing ‘complex themes such as virology, death and dying, and cultural transmission, employing playful strategies to engage audiences and foster dialogue’. Three of his many modes are represented in ‘Connecting Threads’. The ‘Fists’ incorporate hands designed to hold beer cans, from the project ‘CAPSID’, titled after the protein shells of a virus such as HIV which act to protect, cloak and deliver the virus to its host. They were used as props in his film ‘A Virus Walks into a Bar’, before being mounted to the gallery wall like the structural motifs of proteins. They are wrapped in patterns including the Paisley motif, which Walter has used consistently to interrogate the transmission of cultural artefacts like patterns as viruses of the mind. More such appear on ‘Polymerisation’ a ‘protein chain’ comprised of soft cushions, covered in printed patterns, and hard rocks, that have been hydrographically dipped, topped and tailed with oversized babies’ dummies - analogising the telomeres (protective caps) that begin and end a chromosome. ‘Shopkins’ features a VR-drawn blueberry muffin cartoon character, one of his ‘quaisley’ drawings, and a riot of patterns, maximising Walter’s thematic cultural transmissions. 

 

John Walter (born 1978 in Dartford, England) is an artist and academic based in London. He studied at Chelsea School of Art, The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, and The Slade School of Fine Art before earning a PhD in Architecture from the University of Westminster, where he now teaches. His research addresses the intersection of art, biological sciences, and architecture, with a particular emphasis on HIV as a crisis of representation.

Julie Cockburn

                              

‘American Smooth’, 2025 - Hand embroidery on found photograph, 25 x 20 cm

Julie Cockburn (say Coe-burn) finds various delicately crafted ways to transform found items into her own works of art.  The embellishment of photographs with embroidered additions is a central strand of her practice, leading us to guess at how the novel forms generated might relate to the original image. Is some system being followed, for example, to derive new from the old? Often, as here, the effect is to mask vintage portraits so that we are drawn into wondering about who lies beneath, in both appearance and character – perhaps more so than we would be were the face actually revealed. At the same time, Cockburn alludes to how people strive to ‘put on their best face’, as well as how masks can represent the psychological barriers and facades individuals present to the world. She describes her interventions as empathetic responses to the inherent stillness and lack of personality often found in formal studio portraits, injecting a new, abstracted character and narrative into the static image. And the anonymisation of the original invites viewers to bring their own histories and perspectives to the reading of the photographs.

Julie Cockburn (born 1966 in London) lives and works in Suffolk, England. She studied at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design and Chelsea School of Art, London. She is represented by the Photographers’ Gallery (London) and Hopstreet Gallery (Deurle and Brussels), where her solo show ‘Same but Different’ took place in 2023. She also exhibits regularly with Flowers Gallery (London, New York and Hong Kong).

Kate Terry

‘Thread Installation #49’, 2025  (detail)

Kate Terry explores architectural space, geometry, balance, and colour. Her practice encompasses sculpture and drawing, investigating the relationships between points, lines, angles, and forms. Most characteristic, however - as seen here - are site-specific symmographic installations operating somewhere between drawing and sculpture, and responding directly to the architectures they inhabit. Terry’s works create the appearance of volume and serve to highlight and interpret the space itself, as intricate geometric patterns emerge amid hundreds of taut, straight lines which intersect. As Sam Thorne has put it: ‘The classically minimalist effect of these slight means is rather like an Anthony McCall projection done by Fred Sandback, though the brashly DayGlo threads avoid straightforward homage.’  The work begins life as ordinary steel dressmakers’ pins and polyester sewing thread on spools. ‘I like the thread because of its everydayness’, says Terry, ‘it’s not a spectacular material, both the coloured thread and the pins have a humble economy about them’. In Jean Wainwright’s words: ‘The thread’s properties enable her installations to be elusive or suddenly spring into our line of sight with an intense vibrancy, as the straight lines appear to bend, cross each other and mysteriously collect areas of colour.’

Kate Terry (born 1976 in Ontario, Canada) grew up in Bristol, and lives and works in London. She studied sculpture at Manchester Metropolitan University, and received an MFA at the University of Guelph in Canada in 2002. Her solo exhibitions include at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, USA.  She teaches Sculpture and Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts, London.

 

Michael Raedecker

‘back drop’, 2025 - Laser printer pigment transfer, dispersion, acrylic and thread on canvas, 55 x 92 cm

‘demo (quiet boom - silver)’, 2022 - Laser printer pigment transfer, dispersion, acrylic and thread on canvas 49 x 39 cm

 

Michel Raedecker says he is more interested in how to paint than in what to paint. Having studied fashion design, he started from a desire to undermine the ‘high art’ of painting with the ‘low art’ of embroidery, and has arrived - after thirty years - at a process that ‘starts with a hand-drawn sketch which I develop on canvas with thread and paint. I photograph the work discard the original and rework the image digitally. After multiple test prints the final composition is transferred onto canvas. Two layers of the same image are printed on top of each other, however never fully aligning, obscuring the boundaries between paint, print, and stitch. I sometimes paint beneath or over the transfer, finishing the piece with embroidery.’  And yet… there is also a subject: our confrontation with nature, given that ‘we have to deal with nature, but nature does not deal with us; it is just doing its own thing’. That leads him into the problems caused by us becoming alienated from nature while arrogantly assuming our superiority over it – rather as the ‘high art’ of painting can be seen to have become detached from everyday life at some points.

Michael Raedecker (born 1963 in Amsterdam) lives and works in London. He received his BA in Fashion Design from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, and continued his studies at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam and Goldsmiths College, London. He won the John Moores prize in 1999, and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2000. He is represented by Grimm Gallery (Amsterdam, New York and London).

 

Sam Owen Hull

                                    

‘RofPP/23’, 2023 - Acrylic, paintskin, paper, embroidery and reflective thread on canvas, 50 x 55 cm

                                   

‘OT Bs/25 Ot Bs/25’ 2025 - Acrylic, paintskin, embroidery and reflective thread on canvas, calico, muslin and organza, 40 x 30cm

                                            

‘Maquette for a painting 0605’, 2024 -  Acrylic, acrylic medium, embroidery thread, paper, wood, staples, 20 x 20cm

Where some artists in the show play with deception, Manchester based Sam Owen Hull explicitly contrasts the illusory qualities of paint against the textural solidity of stitched marks, with collaged paint skins adding further material presence. She describes her work as exploring ‘the spaces ‘in between’ in our increasingly polarised world, looking for a tension or balance.’ Her inspirations include the signage and typography that is used to structure and organise our environment; and abandoned or unmanaged spaces, where humans and nature begin to enter a more equal and fluid relationship – ‘decaying graffiti against lichen, mould and weeds finding an equilibrium’. In ‘OT Bs/25’, various levels of opacity occur in strips across the surface of the canvas, allowing the viewer to see actual shadows alongside the illusory shadows accompanying the brushstrokes. Recently Owen Hull has been further deconstructing the painterly elements in her work. Thus the ‘Rover Series’ (viewable on request) removes the stretcher altogether in six tondos, each ‘the diameter of a biscuit tin that contained my Mum’s sewing materials, and now contains mine’. And the canvas is removed altogether in the ‘Maquette’, with chunks of paint suspended on the warp and weft of sparsely ‘woven’ embroidery floss.

Sam Owen Hull (born 1972 in Southampton) studied at Winchester School of Art and Manchester Metropolitan University. She lives in Manchester, and works at the intersections of fine art, craft and sculpture. Owen Hull is based at AWOL Studios, who recently showed her work at the Manchester Contemporary art fair. Her solo exhibition ‘Li/Lu’ took place at the Waterside Arts Centre, Manchester, in 2024.

 

Tamar Mason

                                    

‘Shadow Hands’, 2024 - embroidery and beadwork on fabric, 100 x 60 cm

                                                   

‘Transform’, 2024 - embroidery and beadwork on fabric, 100 x 60 cm

Tamar Mason often works with textiles, allowing her to integrate artistic practices more closely into daily life. ‘In a sense’, she says, ‘I am painting or drawing with the thread. I have great fun with getting it to look like painting from a distance, getting 3D effects and shadows. It’s all hand-stitched on high quality fabrics for making men’s suits, so there’s a subversion in stitching into a male fabric.’  Mason combines personal experience and broader cultural narratives to deal with the history and landscapes of Mpumalanga, her home province – a rural area with a rich cultural legacy, but where basic government services are failing local communities, leaving them adversely affected by climate change and ecological crises. Mason considers the social memory of the landscape, memorialising tensions that are still felt today. She explains that these two works ‘recreate the outline of shadows – mine and those close to me - as they fall against the earth, rocks and grassland below, considering the thousands of years of cultures and peoples that have lived there before. These silhouettes also create a dialogue with the Indigenous rock paintings of the San people, created up to 30,000 years ago.’

 

Tamar Mason (born 1966 in Johannesburg) lives and works in Mbombela, South Africa. She has a fine arts diploma from Scuola Lorenzo dei Medici, Florence and a BA from the University of South Africa. Mason is Co-Director of The Artists’ Press, a studio publishing prints by leading artists from southern Africa. She is represented by Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, where her solo exhibition ‘Seeing Shadows’ took place in 2024.

 

Words: Paul Carey-Kent in collaboration with the artists.