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Special Collections Gallery, Manchester Metropolitan University

Helen Felcey & Alice Kettle

(2008)

Alice Ket­tle and I have a his­tory of col­lab­o­rat­ing with each other, which began with the joint ex­hi­bi­tion Place Set­tings.

Alice Ket­tle was com­mis­sion­ed by Hamp­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil to cre­ate a major pub­lic art­work for the Win­ches­ter Dis­cov­ery Cen­tre — a vivid and com­pel­ling ex­plo­ra­tion of the his­to­ry of the city, and of the lim­its of ma­chine stitch as a me­di­um. On my part, a res­i­den­cy at the Jing­dez­hen Ex­per­i­men­tal Fac­to­ry in China had cul­mi­nat­ed in a new body of work in­spired by this jour­ney; that echo ex­pe­ri­enc­es of the Chi­nese land­scape and peo­ple. Place Set­tings is the story of these proj­ects and ex­pe­ri­ences.

In the cour­se of mount­ing this ex­hi­bi­tion, con­ver­sa­tions be­tween Alice and I brought to light shared con­cerns and shared meth­ods. From these con­ver­sa­tions, col­lab­o­ra­tive work was cre­at­ed, which mark­ed a new phase in our re­spec­tive prac­tices. These col­lab­o­ra­tive ex­plo­ra­tions brought to­geth­er two dis­tinct areas of prac­tice and two dis­tinct char­ac­ters, through col­lab­o­ra­tion, spon­ta­ne­i­ty and open­ness.

This col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach later ex­tend­ed to the cu­ra­tor­ship of proj­ects which in­clude the Pair­ings: Con­ver­sa­tions, Col­lab­o­ra­tions, Ma­te­ri­als con­fer­ence at Man­ches­ter School of Art, The House of Eloi for Un­rav­el­ling Uppark and the New Gen­er­a­tion — De­sign for Liv­ing con­fer­ence at De­sign Man­ches­ter 2016.