'Looking Forwards to the Past'

Alice Kettle was commissioned by Hampshire County Council to produce a textile wall hanging for the main wall of the new wing in Winchester Discovery Centre.

Alice Kettle is an internationally renowned artist based in Winchester who uses textiles and embroidery to create immense, beautiful and thought provoking work. She has produced work for Winchester Cathedral, Manchester University, Gloucester Cathedral, the High Court in Edinburgh and The National Library of Australia in Canberra, among others.

'Looking Forwards to the Past' measures 16.5 x 3 metres long and it has taken over a year to make. Alice spent from January to August 2007 working on it in the Guildhall Gallery space within Winchester Guildhall and the gallery was kept open so that the public could see the artist at work. This also gave visitors the rare opportunity to revisit the work and see it evolve over time. In total, nearly 10,000 visitors came to the gallery during the making process.

Due to the sheer scale of the work Alice Kettle had to initially create 9 large panels which were joined together along with additional smaller panels to create the final work.

Alice has incorporated themes from Winchester as the inspiration for her work, looking at the past, present and future, creating a powerful and beautiful vision. The technique of using a variety of threads, thick and thin, matt colour and metallic, creates a surface texture to the work that shimmers with the changing light and gives the piece a sense of rhythm and movement.

The sheer size, weight and delicate composition the embroidery meant that the skills and experience of the Museums Service Conservation Team were called upon to carry out the installation.

The first stage involved rolling the embroidery onto two rollers then lifting it vertically using two wheeled bases, scaffold towers and lots of muscle power! Once vertical, the embroidery was slowly unwound and fixed manually into place using Velcro, one side on the reverse of the embroidery and the other stapled to wooden batons on the wall.

Supervised by Alice herself, the installation took eight members of the Museums Service’s Conservation and Decorative Arts teams a day to complete! A plan for the long term care of the embroidery has been put in place and it is now on permanent display in Winchester Discovery Centre.