Ruup & Form, 7 Tilney Court, London EC1V 9BQ
Join writer Isabella Smith with gallery artists Woo Jin Joo and Christopher Kelly at Ruup & Form for London Textile Month. Explore how textiles carry memory, transform materials, and inspire new worlds.
As part of the exhibition In Company of the Unexpected (exhibition runs from 12 Sept - 22 Oct) at Ruup & Form Gallery, this talk celebrates the tactile and imaginative potential of textiles in contemporary practice. Threads carry stories. Woven, knotted and stitched across time, connecting material process with memory, place and cultural inheritance.
In this special conversation for London Textile Month, writer and editor Isabella Smith joins gallery artists Woo Jin Joo and Christopher Kelly to explore the material and conceptual power of textiles in contemporary art. Together, they will reflect on how fibre can hold personal and collective histories, transform humble or salvaged matter into resonant forms and inspire new worlds of making.
Woo Jin’s practice is steeped in memory and cultural references, carrying echoes of place, tradition, and personal myth. Christopher Kelly’s fibre and textile sculptures, crafted from salvaged and elemental materials, investigate neurodiversity, sensory language, and community connection through tactile and collaborative forms.
This conversation invites audiences to consider how textiles transcend utility to become vessels for narrative, empathy, and transformation, threads not merely as material, but as living conduits binding together stories, identities, and imaginative possibilities.
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