About
About
Christina Hesford is an artist-maker who uses textile processes, such as weaving and knotting, to make art objects and wall-based artworks. Growing up in Indonesia and Brazil has given her a keen awareness both of the commonality and the individuality of humans everywhere, and so she makes work about being human: the spectrum of the human condition.
In the West, beauty has often been associated with perfection. Her current work challenges notions of beauty by using imperfection to create beautiful works, often using knots to symbolise this. She has been inspired by the repair aesthetic of ‘kintsukuroi’ - the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold or silver lacquer and the understanding that the object is more beautiful for having been broken. She uses weaving as a framework to combine these various concepts.
From the traditional to the unorthodox, she uses a wide variety of materials including silk, wool, and linen, to paper, tree-fibres, de-commissioned firehoses, and polythene sheeting. There are obvious disparities between the market values of these various materials, however, what gives them their aesthetic values are the transformative making processes applied to them.
Weaving is an inherently time-intensive skill which challenges the trend towards an ever-quicker pace of life. Yet for Christina, the numbers, counting, repetition and rhythms prevalent in weaving and knotting make them peaceful and meditative making processes. The value and purpose of these objects is transformed by the time taken to make them, challenging the throw-away culture of consumerism.
Her practice alternates between the use of white, and the use of colour. White is both full and empty, providing a canvas for her conceptual ideas.
Christina Hesford makes work for galleries, public, and private spaces. She also makes site-specific installation works, undertakes commissions, writes for publication, is a lecturer and member of The 62 Group of Textile Artists.
EDUCATION
2020 Northumbria University - Arts MRes: ‘Re-Making our Worlds: Craft as a methodology for embodying new ways to value our worlds’
2017 Manchester Metropolitan University - Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education
2014 Manchester School of Art - Bachelor of Arts in Textiles in Practice: First Class
2011 Cleveland College of Art and Design - Foundation in Art and Design: Distinction
EXHIBITIONS AND WORKSHOPS
2024 Interactive artwork for the opening of Jacqueline Poncelet: In The Making, MIMA
2023 Drawn Together, Platform A Gallery
2022 Installation and workshop for the launch of Timberloop, Timberland (Carnaby Street)
2022 Conversations: People, Places, Materials, Objects with The 62 Group,
St.Barbe Museum & Art Gallery
2021 Out of Place Exhibition, Textile and Place conference/British Textile Biennial
Middlesbrough Art Weekender, The Auxiliary
2020 Pushing the Limits: a virtual shaft weaving art exhibition
2019 ‘Notions of Imperfection’ + frame-loom weaving workshop, Toast (Shoreditch)
Summer Show: Pick’n’Mix, Pineapple Black Gallery
Group exhibition with Trouping the Colour, Clerkenwell Design Week
2018 Hothouse: Selected, New Ashgate Gallery
2017 Selected for Crafts Council Hothouse 2017
Legacy Exhibition, Manchester school of Art
2016 STABLE Installation at Festival of Thrift
Summer Show: Weave, The Makers Guild in Wales
Orange Pip Market, Handweaving demonstration, Middlesbrough
15th International Triennial of Tapestry in Lodz, Poland
Textiles in Practice in Progress, Manchester School of Art
2015 Grassington Festival Summer Exhibition: The North and Beyond, Grassington
2014 Alwaysallwaysland Exhibition, London
Alwaysallwaysland, Manchester School of Art & Design Graduate Show,
Manchester School of Art
COMMISSIONS
2021 Woven commission for 1508 London
2017 Woven commission for Private Residence
2014 Woven commission for Vertical Gallery, Manchester School of Art
Woven commission for St. Peter’s Chaplaincy, Manchester
ACADEMIC POSTS
2021 - 2023 Lecturer for Textile Design at Nottingham Trent University
2015 - 2021 Associate Lecturer and Teaching Assistant for Textiles in Practice at Manchester
School of Art
MEMBERSHIP
2022 - pres. Member of Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art Advisory Board
2020 - pres. Member of The 62 Group of Textile Artists
2020 - 2024 Treasurer for The 62 Group of Textile Artists
2017 - pres. Fellow of the HEA
LECTURES
2016 April - ‘Portfolio Talks’, Manchester School of Art
2015 October - ’My Practice’, Manchester School of Art
April - ‘Portfolio Talks’, Manchester School of Art
PUBLICATIONS
2016 ‘Dénouement’ included in Average Art, August ed.
‘Exhibition Review: 15th International Triennial of Tapestry, Poland’, guest blog for
Selvedge (online)
‘Art that inspires…’, article for textileartist.org
2015 ’Creative Bones’, article for textileartist.org
‘To Construct and Deconstruct’, interview for textileartist.org
AWARDS
2024 Artists’ Network North East Bursary awardee
2017 Crafts Council: Hothouse awardee
2016 STABLE Bursary awarded by Navigator North, Festival of Thrift, and Arts Council
England
2014 Context Weavers Award Winner