Whom You Know: Textile Artist Alice Kettle wins the 2023 Brookfield Properties Craft Award

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Textile Artist Alice Kettle wins the 2023 Brookfield Properties Craft Award

UK's leading contemporary craft prize in partnership with Crafts Council Announced at Collect 2023

Recognised as one of the most important textile artists in the UK, Alice Kettle, represented by Candida Stevens Gallery, has been announced as the winner of the 2023 Brookfield Properties Craft Award. Kettle won the award, a leading contemporary craft prize for UK-based artists worth the equivalent value of £60,000, in recognition of her significant contribution to the national story of contemporary craft and making.

Winner of 2023 Brookfield Properties Craft Award artist Alice Kettle in her home and studio. Photo by Alun Callender.

Part of Kettle's winning body of work responds to the theme of the oceans and our collective need to protect them, created especially for her presentation with Candida Stevens Gallery at the 19th edition of Collect, the leading international fair for contemporary craft and design, taking place at Somerset House until 5 March, 2023 and online with Artsy.net until 12 March, 2023.

Internationally renowned for being a pioneer of her art form, Kettle uses a unique embroidery technique on the sewing machine, incorporating expressive lines to create a sense of movement, describing figures and evoking their own sense of place in the world. Her work has been held in numerous international public collections for decades, including the Crafts Council – a major public asset which holds over 1,700 objects acquired from the 1970s onwards including a 1988 piece by Kettle.

As part of the prize, three of Kettle's new pieces will enter the Crafts Council's national collection as an acquisition gift from Brookfield Properties, and she will also receive curatorial and production support to stage a solo exhibition with a more extensive collection of her works across two of Brookfield Properties' sites in the heart of the City of London which will open to the public this summer.

The artist was selected as the award winner by the curatorial teams at Crafts Council and Brookfield Properties. Her work won from a shortlist of five nominated artists, which included ceramicist Amy Hughes (Cynthia Corbett Gallery), material-led artist Anne-Laure Cano (155A Gallery), ceramic sculptor Noa Chernichovsky (Charles Burnand Gallery) and multi-disciplinary artist Samuel Nnorom (Gallerie REVEL).

Alice Kettle, Winner of 2023 Brookfield Properties Craft Award

"Craft is so important, it is about the deep understanding of the material that captivates, provokes and conveys experience, and inherently connects and transforms lives. Working in craft is life changing and I am proud to champion all forms of making."

Saff Williams, Curatorial Director, Brookfield Properties

"It is special to celebrate Alice Kettle with the 2023 Award, an artist whose career has spanned four decades, who has continuously pushed the boundaries of textile art with her thoughtful embroidered works which use medium of thread and action of tension, to embody notions of the human condition and connection to nature. This year we celebrate an artist committed to her practice and an ever-changing narrative, which we strongly believe will create two stunning summer shows for the public."

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