Port to Port @ Felixstowe Museum & Landguard Fort

PORT TO PORT, a travelling artwork and project, commissioned by The Art Station in collaboration with First Light Festival, SPILL Festival and Hamilton MAS, makes final port this September, having journeyed from the port towns of Lowestoft and Ipswich to Felixstowe over the last two years.
Sophie Giller is an artist whose practice spans sculpture, textiles, and social engagement.
For PORT TO PORT her work involved collaboration with communities in all three Suffolk port towns to create an evolving, thought-provoking installation, that explores identity, storytelling, and place.

This exhibition takes inspiration from Giller’s research into the maritime history of the ports towns of Suffolk, exploring the past, present and future of these ever changing places, and Giller’s making alongside the people who live, work and travel there. Experimental textile work, exquisite quilting, the process of print, paint and ceramics combine with project work and writing, to create a rich artistic response to in depth social
engagement. Giller will also show new pieces that draw on practice research into the endangered crafts of sail and rope making.

Giller has created the final iteration of Port to Port as an installation comprising twelve large-scale patchwork sail shapes, based on exchange of community stories and pictures, translated into printed textiles. Wooden perching structures take inspiration from boat gunnels, a place of attachment that provides strength, safety and protection. This installation can be viewed at Landguard Trust in mid September.

Find out more about her HERE.