It’s not long now until we will be installing our WILD! exhibition at the Penny School Gallery in Kingston upon Thames, ready for its opening on the 4th November at 10am.
We would of course love to see you all at the Gallery and say hello, but we realise this isn’t possible so we are giving you a little taster of the work our artists are exhibiting and will also post lots of images on our social media accounts and website.
Eleven of our artists are exhibiting in WILD! and we have all been busy for the past year creating artwork on their chosen themes and in our unique styles. Our artists have chosen a wide variety of themes such as global climate change, winter storms, coastal erosion, bird migration, native plants, amulets, sacred sites, wild women, fantasy flowers, disruption, colour and architecture.
Although we are called Phoenix Contemporary Textiles don’t expect to only see fabric and thread used in our work. You will also see mixed media artwork, collage, printing, knitting and contemporary basketry in our exhibition in addition to textiles and embroidery. Basically, we use any material we can get our hands on for example, found and natural materials such as rusted metal, driftwood, bones and even an old sewing machine.
Here is a little taster of what our artists have in the exhibition.
Marie-Ghislaine Beauce
Marie-Ghislaine plays with binaries of texture, scale, materials and colour in her richly layered textile compositions to disrupt and challenge the viewers’ expectations of geometric abstraction.
Joan Bingley
Joan Bingley has drawn on her long-standing interests in both travel and birds for this WILD! exhibition. As well as individual birds, Joan has looked at the techniques used by birds in travelling long distances such as wing sizes and the ability to sleep with only half the brain at a time. She also explores the patterns created by the routes of migration across the world.
Lynne Butt
With her love of colour Lynne is drawn to the work of Henri Matisse and Andrè Derain known as Les Fauves (wild beasts) and uses colour to disrupt our view of the world.
Jo Coombes
Jo looks at the consequences of an altered environment in response to climate change. These vary throughout the world but Jo focuses on the policy of deliberately neglecting sea defences around the British coastline. She feels this is often a misguided attempt to save money by ‘allowing nature to take its course’.
Plants constantly evolve to survive irrevocable environmental changes and apocalyptic events, and Jo has created a whimsical installation of fantasy flowers based on lichens, horsetails and liverworts to spark a new generation of flora.
Rosaline Darby
Influenced by the Surrealist paintings of Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington, Rosaline’s “Three Graces” embody the elements that make life possible on our planet: Earth, Air and Water. For too long, an anthropocentric view of the world has led humans to believe that they are above, and separate from, the rest of the living world. Rather, we are an integral part of it, and dependent upon it for our survival.
Kate Davis
Kate’s interest in wildlife in the urban environment led to her thinking of herds of deer in local Richmond and Bushy parks. She has long admired their beautiful shapes and the way their natural forms and antlers blend with the trees and landscape. A paint and stitch technique was used to give a feeling of connection with the earth and the surrounding vegetation.
The second strand of Kate’s work explores knitting and crochet how working repetitively with your hands has a meditative and calming effect on us- something we all need in this increasingly wild world.
Robertta McPherson
Robertta’s inspiration was the ‘wild’ winter storms in her native Scotland. The direction of the strong winds determined the scale of damage to the woodland, bending and uprooting established trees. It also affected the fields and hedgerows, with the grasses and shrubs leaning into the prevailing wind.
Patti Taylor
Patti Taylor’s Wild wall hangings are inspired by Spurn Point, a narrow spit of land at the mouth of the River Humber. Once home to a thriving, close-knit community and a RNLI station active since 1810, it is now abandoned and reclaimed as a wildlife sanctuary.
Exposed to the North Sea on one side and the Humber on the other, the land feels raw, windswept, and elemental. The only sounds are sea and wind, yet traces of memory linger in the emptiness.
Maria Walker
Maria has dedicated the past year to foraging and collecting natural objects, materials and ideas which she has curated to create a document of her interactions with nature during her everyday life. She has an eye for noticing the unseen and overlooked and highlights their inherent beauty and hidden narratives in her artwork
Linda Walsh
Linda initially thought of all the ‘wild’ places she has visited, jungles, deserts etc.
But she was then drawn back to her interest in architecture and inspired by the amazing building of the ‘Fondation Louis Vuitton’. Set in the Bois de Boulogne on the outskirts of Paris this ‘wild’ building looks like a giant sailing ship surrounded by water.
Joan West
Joan West has interpreted the theme of WILD! in two ways.
One set of work is based on invasive species of plants – ivy, convolvulus and thistles.
The other set is inspired by the natural world and the places chosen and imbued with special significance by mankind – a cave where ochre is collected, a painted cavern, a hidden den and a pilgrimage site made up of a venerated tree and a well beneath it for offerings.
Here are the details of how to find us if you are able to come along and see it in person as well as the dates and times the gallery will be open.
WILD! will be at The Penny School Gallery, Kingston College Creative Industries Centre, 55 Richmond Road, Kingston upon Thames, KT2 5BP from the 4th to 14th November 2025.
Opening Times
Mon, Tues, Weds 10am to 5pm
(Wed 12th) 10am to 8pm
Thursdays 10am to 6.30pm
Fridays 10am to 4pm
Saturday 10am to 2pm
You can also follow Phoenix Contemporary Textiles on Facebook: Prism Textiles and Instagram: @phoenixtextiles and @kingston.college_creatives.