ronapainting gallery is pleased to present Susan Moxley’s first solo exhibition in the gallery. This exhibition focuses on her appliqué series that combines repurposed fabric, woven with cotton, hand-spun goats wool and Sparta bush flax. These works hold within their fibres a fragility, reflecting our world at its present.

The works originate from the lengths of time that Moxley has spent at the island of Kythira, Southern Greece, from the late 1970s to the present. Throughout this time Moxley has observed it change, while many women who worked within the island used looms, gradually synthetic fabrics replaced the handmade cotton sheets that were used to harvest produce from the olive trees. Weighted handmade woollen blankets also became rarer, replaced by lighter synthetic materials.

Moxley began to accumulate a collection of these fabrics that had been discarded with a focus on the handspun yarns, their patina, discolourations, and darned patches. It was evident in these of a time when a value was held in the art and craft of materials and objects. In one instance, she found a burlap sack that had been repaired with fabric from a stained apron, which itself had been darned. To her, the burlap sack held beauty and history, that is absent in objects that many in current Western society possess and purchase.

Included in the exhibition are collagraph prints, oils, and collages of watercolour and graphite.

Susan Moxley (b. South Africa) lives and works in Oxford, England. Her works have been exhibited in the UK and internationally and are within public and private collections.