Alice Fox works from her studio in Saltaire, West Yorkshire. She studied Contemporary Surface Design & Textiles at Bradford School of Arts & Media and has a MA in Creative Practice from Leeds Arts University. She is a member of the Textile Study Group.
Sustainability is at the heart of Fox’s practice. The desire to take an ethical approach has driven a shift within her work from using conventional art and textile materials into exploring found objects, gathered materials and natural processes.
“The work that I make is process led. I gather the materials that are available to me, testing, sampling and exploring them to find possibilities using my textiles-based skill set and techniques borrowed from soft basketry. I make small sculptural pieces, bringing different materials together to form intimate tactile surfaces and structures. These works are presented in grids and groups.
Establishing my allotment garden as a source of materials for my work has provided a space where I can experiment, exploring the potential of what grows there, planted and wild, as well as other materials found on the plot. Materials are produced, gathered and processed seasonally and are hard-won: I may only have a small batch of each type of usable material each year. As a result, each bundle of dandelion stems, sweetcorn fibre or hand processed flax is enormously precious (to me) by its scarcity and the meaning attached to it through its sourcing and hand-processing. Alongside the use of materials for 3D making, I gather plant material to make inks, dyes and stains. This is a ‘bricolage’ approach to making: using what is at hand on the plot and exploring the materiality and potential of those materials within the context of my own making skills.”
“The work that I make is process led. I gather the materials that are available to me, testing, sampling and exploring them to find possibilities using my textiles-based skill set and techniques borrowed from soft basketry.”