Vanessa Rolf: From conception to creation

Artist Vanessa Rolf creates striking monochromatic pieces using her intuitive selection of fabric and stitches to explore her favourite subjects; maps, journeys, memorials, inheritance and archives.

Vanessa uses a tactile approach of collecting, sorting and editing to refine her project ideas. This comes about as a result of her fascination with the processes of documenting and labelling to claim and filter objects and experiences. She incorporates a mixture of hand and machine stitch techniques, along with appliqué, printing and dyeing. Hand-stitch is a particular attraction, with its meditative and repetitive action, physically recording the time Vanessa invests in her work. She loves to make full use of the potential that stitching has to instinctively refine texture and design, by adjusting her stitching as she goes along.

Vanessa has recently showed her work in exhibitions including ‘Documentary Discourses’ at the University of the Creative Arts in Farnham, the Embroiderers Guild at Winchester Discovery Centre and ‘Making Common Ground’ in collaboration with Alice Kettle. She is exhibiting in the current 62 Group show ‘CTRL/Shift’ with tour venues including MAC Birmingham, the National Centre for Craft and Design in Sleaford and Scunthorpe Visual Arts Centre.

Alongside her work as an artist, Vanessa is a freelance educator, visiting lecturer and engagement consultant, teaching at Chelsea College of Art and Design, Winchester School of Art and the University of the Creative Arts, Farnham. She is currently Engagement Curator at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art and a member of the 62 Group of Textile Artists.