Sue Hotchkis, UK SAQA Member - featured in Inspirational magazine

"New work: Sue Hotchkis is a British textile/fiber artist originally featured in Inspirational back in January 2015. Sue has a passion for decay, deconstruction, a breaking down under the elements of nature. Her work is always a complex structure of relief and detail. She talks to Inspirational as well as showing a range of work."

Inspirational 18 can be instantly downloaded from the following link: https://payhip.com/b/Kqiw

FOQ - Stuff for Thought - More images

Festival of Quilts 2018 - Stuff for Thought

Heidi Drahota - Used 3 - Think

Birgit Friese

Internationale Textilausstellung - International textile exhibition

Shared project of textile artist Heidi Drahota and the Human Rights Office of the City of Nuremberg

September 9^th – September 24^th 2016

With the awarding of the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award 2015 to the labor unionist of the textile industry in Bangladesh Amirul Haque Amin the city of Nuremberg gives the award to an activist for social and economic human rights for the first time.

By doing this it wants to direct attention to 3 different topics:

·       First of all the awareness of the rights of workers in Bangladesh. It is very dangerous to be in a labor union there. The activists don’t only run the risk of losing their jobs when they fight against bad working conditions; they are also often harassed, threatened or arrested. The jury hopes that the award will give Mr. Amin and his allies the protection that they need to continue their work towards humane working conditions.

·       The jury also wants to call upon the consumer conscience and raise awareness for responsible consumption. The public has a right to know under what conditions their clothes are produced.

·       Last but not least the jury’s vote is embedded in an eco-nomic framework since global and fair trade without the adherance to social standards runs contrary to basic human needs.

Interpretations of this trinity of topics should be incorporated into the international textile exhibition „Stuff for Thoughts“ from your own perspective, your own technique and your own perception.

Review and outlook on a textile exhibition on the topic of human rights from an artistic perspective
Artists from all over the world were won over to put together 23 works to an exhibition, which drew the visitors, in addition to numerous experts, also tourists from all over the world, who happened to look around in the hall of honor of the historical Town hall of Nuremberg.
"Bringing together the different works just under the historical building conditions was really a challenge," said Heidi Drahota, the initiator and curator of this exhibition.

The artists spanned a wide thematic arc. While Eszter Bornemisza from Hungary with her clothes in 'Grown up', embedded in text fragments from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, connects the present with the past and puts the current conflicts in the historical context of the Second World War, Brigitte Kopp, D, with the rights of the children and Uta Lenk in turn has the rights of women in mind. In her handquilted work 'Disappearing in the Blue', Caroline Higgs, France, points to events in the Gambia due to lack of work.
Isabelle Wiessler, in her freely hanging work 'The flip side of the coin', shows in the most urgent way the bad, exploitative working conditions in the textile industry, such as: Bangladesh and the beautiful world of fashion. Also, Deborah Stockdale from Ireland and Irena Zemanova from the Czech Republic showed this in a very different way with their 'The Ghost At The Machine: In Honor Of All Garment Workers' and 'Manufactory'. Hand sewn in cantata technique, Johanna Spaethe from Germany dealt with the topic in her 'Bloody Trade'.
With the questions 'Do we need everything we have? by M. Unterharrnscheidt and 'Do You Shop Ethically?' Sunprinted by Irene Mac-William from Northern Ireland, they gave us a push to think about our consumer behavior.
"My interest in putting together a truly eclectic and multi-layered exhibition not only referred to the contents that were to be found in the thematic triangle, but also to showcase a wide variety of textile art techniques, including self-dyed and printed fabrics with lettering free of charge machine-quilted work by Yvonne Berther from Switzerland is a great enrichment of the exhibition, in which it points to human rights and ecology as indispensable pillars for a responsible future development.This also includes Cas Holmes, UK, a multi-layered four-parter Various layers of fabric, paper and embroidery manages to call on Cas to conserve nature in an almost poetic way.
'Used Look' picks up on elements such as linocut on silk, collage, paper skins made of denim, as well as quilting and also felting. "In addition to the variety of techniques, my work should show that as consumers, we need to be mindful and rethink our behavior in order to find better living conditions for people at the other end of the world." With this explanation of their four-part, Heidi Drahota takes up again the statement of the mayor of Nuremberg Ulrich Maly on her handmade denim papers, which reflects our responsibility and invites us to become active.

Since the works of Hilde van Schaardenburg from the Netherlands and Yujin Lee, South Korea, were sold in favor of the human rights award winner Amirul Haque Amin from Bangladesh, you can see many new works as well as many other works. Because the exhibition 'material for thought' was for 30.03. - 01.04.2017 to Prague for the Prague Patchwork Meeting and 09. - 11. June to Fürth for the annual meeting of the German Patchworkgilde e. V. invited. The 2 x 2 m mural 'Thinking Fabric' was also sold. Mr Amin reported on a new project in which only women receive the support of his work. For this he wants to use the proceeds of this exhibition of almost 5000 €.
Heidi Drahota said: "A really great success, and who knows what else is coming, I could imagine that the exhibition will also be shown in other places."
It came true: on the Nadelwelt in Karlsruhe in May 2018, in the Textile Museum in Helmbrechts May 12 to July 23, this compilation, which is still to work by Birgit Friese (Germany), Mirjam Pet-Jacobs (Netherlands), Lizzy Mayrl (Austria) and Ana ZLatkes (Argentina) has been expanded once again. With the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August, the curator finishes this project.