Sophie Jones

Sophie Jones is a textile artist tackling ideas surrounding domesticity and young parenthood. Jones stitches passages of continuous prose to address the unrelenting mundanity of parenthood, playing to the trajectory of embroidery a feminine, domestic craft. Using red cotton thread, Jones compels the viewer to read with urgency, simultaneously intending to overwhelm with the sheer mass of unpunctuated prose.

Meticulously hand-sewing each piece, Jones amplifies the labour of both her practice and her parental responsibility. As such, she creates a dialogue between the maternal experience and the product of her labour. In leaving the backs of the tapestries exposed, Jones aims to visually represent the labour of her craft, a conscious subversion of the fact a mother’s work is often unseen and unappreciated. Often using calico that has been stained or manipulated, the work appears consciously worn, as though it should be discarded or cleaned. Deliberately unfinished, edges left raw, the work is never whole or complete.

Each assigned an article number, the tapestries function as part of a larger catalogue concerned with documenting and preserving the objects of her child’s early years. Sitting amongst used toys, outgrown clothes and unwanted teething rings, the work becomes influenced by her desire to contain and ‘store’ these documents and experiences. Stitching words into cloth gives permanence to the artist’s thoughts, a reflection of their desire to cling onto the physical remnants of the earliest moments of motherhood.

“My practice is defined by experiences of motherhood, but is expansively informed by my perception of everyday life, routine.”