All items by Nerissa Cargill Thompson

Art, sculpture & jewellery created from recycled fabric and cement.

Bio:

Designer, maker and facilitator with over 20 years experience of professional and community practice. Originally trained in Theatre Design but through my community arts practice, my interest in fibre art grew and a desire to develop personal artwork. Recent graduate in MA Textile Practice from Manchester School of Art. Member of Prism Contemporary Textiles Collective, Society of Embroidered Work, Precious Collective and Society of British Theatre Design. AKA Concrete Litter Girl.

Artist statement:

Through three-dimensional textiles and photography, I investigate how things change appearance & shape over time, not just eroding or decaying but also new layers of growth, giving interesting juxtapositions of structure and colour. I use old clothes and scrap materials for both economic & ecological sustainability.

Recent sculptural work highlights the issue of plastic pollution and climate change. It invites us to consider the packaging that we use and discard on a daily basis; objects such as drinks bottles that are so lightweight and seem so insignificant that we barely notice them. Casting them in cement to make them heavy and solid, I hope to convey the weight of the issue and the permanence of these disposables. The incorporation of detailed embroidery touches upon the way our waste becomes subsumed into the natural world around us. However, the pretty, colourful lichens and molluscs fail to obliterate the hulking, grey, concrete textures that peer out from beneath them.

How I Make my Work:

My sculptures are formed using a combination of embellishing and embroidery to create coastal inspired textures, blending a variety of recycled fabrics to create subtle variations in tone. I stitch the resulting textiles inside waste plastic that I use to cast true to life pieces with cement, giving a distinct contrast between the manmade structure of the packaging and the soft natural textures. To limit waste, I use my textile offcuts to make jewellery and magnets, own their own or cast with cement in old food packaging.

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