Natalie Sirett Art
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Natalie Sirett Art

Artist Talk & Q&A

15/5/2021

 
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You are invited to my talk and Q&A for Ro2ART
Host: Jordan Roth.
Time: 8pm GMT on Sunday May 16th.
YES! THAT’S TOMORROW!
Just click here: http://ro2.us/nataliesirettarttalk to join the Zoom meeting.

April in Dallas

5/4/2021

 
I'm having an actual (NOT virtual) exhibition, opening this month in Dallas, Texas. With everything in Europe so thoroughly locked down, I am feeling very, very lucky. This slideshow shows some of the works on show. Details of the exhibition and opening event are below.
Kevin, Wishes & Charms
Natalie Sirett


WHERE: Ro2 Art in The Cedars 
1501 S. Ervay St. Dallas TX, 75215
WHEN: April 17 - May 15, 2021
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OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, April 17, 2021, 12-8pm
Ro2 will be hosting limited entry opening reception, reserve your FREE ticket via Eventbrite: RSVP

​Natalie Sirett is a British artist trained in academic painting and printmaking. Her newest body of work is informed by the survival of her own body, now in remission after undergoing ten months of treatment for cancer. Sirett hand embroidered over fifty antique handkerchiefs as she processed coming to terms with her own mortality. 

The intimacy of these textiles; square patches of fabric that hold joy, uncertainty, sadness, loss, happiness and hope, are a compelling choice of substrate for the artist’s words to exist on. The images take shape on a background of memory, pierced, looped, and needle-worked into Sirett’s compositions. These fiber art pieces, as well as several assemblage sculptures have never before been exhibited.

Antidotes to Fear of Death

1/1/2021

 
Sharing Rebecca Elson's Antidotes to Fear of Death because a vision of the vastness of time and space knocks me out of myself and into an appreciation of LIFE; a much-needed tonic on days like these. ​Happy New Year!
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The Spiral in Andromeda, Hubble, Nasa
​Antidotes to Fear of Death
Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.
 

In My Shoes

24/10/2020

 
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ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM
I am pleased to be one of 17 artists selected for Artists in Residence at The Ashmolean in Oxford. The competition aimed to draw out and document our experiences of Covid-19. My selected work, I Want my Stupid Little Life Back, from the K is for Kevin series, felt particularly relevant as I stitched it during lockdown. It is always a good feeling when your work strikes a chord and to be exhibiting, albeit virtually, in The Ashmolean is an honour!
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IN MY SHOES mixed media 2020
I have made and unmade this piece many times in the past couple of years. It was initially inspired by a story about a Hebronese shoemaker, who has a roaring trade in shoes, made with a little earth from the former Palestine sealed in their soles. The secret experience of 'walking' on home soil that these shoes offer intrigues me. As does the  notion of a destined homeland for both Palestinians and Jews, my own tribe, on my father's side.
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THE RED SHOES
Speaking of Oxford, I have to say, I am gutted that Covid-19 is preventing me from setting up a show of the Medusa & her Sisters series in the University's Stelios Ioananou Centre,  just yards from The Ashmolean! I am particularly sorry to miss an opportunity to meet contributing poets to the Medusa & her Sisters book and to hear them read from it! 
​I am releasing 6 new giclee editions from the COVID void, featuring paintings from the Medusa Series.
New Series

We Need to Talk About Kevin

26/7/2020

 
​It is possibly unfair to have christened my carcinoma Kevin. I’m sure there are many delightful and honourable Kevins in this world, but when I was first diagnosed with cancer, my terrified brain could not get close to imagining this thing inside me, which, unless it was dealt with, would eventually kill me. I took to calling this 48mm triple negative carcinoma Kevin because, as Lionel Shriver’s novel states, ‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’. This new series of artworks K is for Kevin documents the experience of addressing Kevin. Each phrase embroidered on handkerchiefs is taken from my steroid-fuelled chemo diaries. Together these pieces tell the story of Kevin’s demise in 54 chapters. 
K is for Kevin #1 - I AM NOT WHAT I WAS. I DON’T KNOW WHAT I AM embroidery on handkerchief, 22x22cm, Natalie Sirett 2020
K is for Kevin #2 - K is for KEVIN embroidery on handkerchief, 27x29cm, Natalie Sirett 2020
K is for Kevin #3 - I DON'T WANT TO DIE embroidery on handkerchief, 18x18cm, Natalie Sirett 2020
K is for Kevin #4 - I HAVEN'T DONE ENOUGH embroidery on handkerchief, 28x28cm, Natalie Sirett 2020
K is for Kevin #5 - KEVIN is my CARCINOMA embroidery on handkerchief, 24x27cm, Natalie Sirett, 2020
K is for Kevin #10 - WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN embroidery on handkerchief, 26x26cm, Natalie Sirett 2020
K is for Kevin #15 - POISON CURE, embroidery on handkerchief, 30x30cm, Natalie Sirett 2020
K is for Kevin #27 - CAN'T SLEEP, HAVEN'T CRIED embroidery on handkerchief, 28x28cm, Natalie Sirett 2020
K is for Kevin #34 - I PUT MY HAIR IN A PAPER BAG embroidery on handkerchief, 30x30cm, Natalie Sirett 2020
Click here to read the story in full.

Plague(d) hankies & reasons to be cheerful

31/5/2020

 
I have spent a lot of lock down embroidering pieces of text onto vintage handkerchiefs. These words come from my steroid-fuelled chemo diaries and the squares, when finished, will be sewn into a quilt. It is amazing how many of the thoughts I am stitching resonate with what we are going through in this pandemic. Cancer patients lucky enough to get into remission are told they can't go back, things have changed, the work now is to accept a 'new normal'. Sound familiar at all? Since there is nothing normal in this new, you have my permission to long for the old normal, whenever the mood takes you.
 

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This blog is usually all about moi, but if you are in search of a tonic in troubled times, my husband Paul's musical Reasons To Be Cheerful is available free online on YouTube from June 3rd. ​Graeae Theatre's production had nationwide tours, concert versions across the world and a performance at the London 2012 Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony, It's rude, raucous - an absolute joy Although, fans of Margaret Thatcher or Boris Johnson may want to give it a miss!

The Blossomest Blossom

14/4/2020

 
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          "The whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be" * read more
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*Dennis Potter on witnessing an exceptional spring
I see this tree, on my daily circuit of Waterlow Park and something about it makes me tearful. Perhaps it is the contrast between its black twig-less branches and the foaming, white flowers. It is definitely a tree that's had health issues. Perhaps it is a tree for these times? When I look at the tree, I hear the writer Dennis Potter in his last interview, * describing the blossom outside his window. Potter, who had terminal cancer, was speaking of the acuteness of experience when you have to live, as we do at the moment, in the present tense. The tree also reminds me of Japanese screens, so I am sharing another collection of images for your delectation and delight, from the many folders cluttering my OneDrive. Some screens are at the Met Museum in NYC, others gathered from web searches. I love their wide, wide compositions and the way artists carve up their golden spaces with line and form.  
*Potter, author of Blue Remembered Hills, Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective spoke in a celebrated interview with Melvyn Bragg, it is well worth watching/watching again. Dennis Potter Interview

Some LIFE AFFIRMING ITALIAN TREASURES

31/3/2020

 
​I must say I'm feeling fed up today. All that time I was having cancer treatment, I felt like I'd had to step out of the stream of life, while everyone else was in the flow, swimming on by. Having taken my medicine and lived with the possibility that I might die, I am in remission and fully fit. The stream of life, however, has stopped. THIS WAS NOT THE PLAN! I spent thirteen months putting life on hold and petulant though I may seem (I am very petulant), it's just not fair! It's true that I don't feel left out anymore but I wanted to rejoin the world not have everyone else join me in this bizarre waiting game.
So, now that we are united in longing to have our lives back and wondering if we will die, ​I'm sharing photos, taken this time last year in Siena and Florence., None of us will be visiting Italy in the foreseeable future but I hope they bring you a little JOY. .

Fighting Talk

23/3/2020

 
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I'm hoping everyone is bearing up in these strange times, finding ways to cope with the solitude and the stress.. The joke in our house  is that, with self-isolation being  our natural state, our time has finally come!
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I was expecting to announce dates for The Medusa & her Sisters Exhibition's tour to Oxford later this year, then on to a northern venue and an overseas venue in 2021, but the world's closed, so I'm saying nothing...
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I've just signed up for the Artist Support Pledge. Due to the COVID-19, many artists have found themselves without work, teaching, technical support, gallery work. The support concept is a simple one.. Artist's post images of their work, on Instagram, which they are willing to sell for no more than £200 each (not including shipping.) Every time they reach £1000 of sales they pledge to buy another artist's work for £200. Lots of amazing artists are pledging work. ​My first three pledges are the etchings below. Click on images to find out more..
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ISLAND
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WEST TO EAST
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BLITZ

Art in 2020

1/1/2020

 
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Happy New Decade! 

I like the sound of the twenties. Politics not withstanding, I'm planning on staying alive and living it well!
Here's some news on 2020 projects: 
Medusa & Her Sisters Book
has been accepted by the National Poetry Library - no easy feat, hurrah!
Medusa & Her Sisters Show
A full exhibition of Medusa paintings and drawings plus a poetry event is confirmed at Oxford University in autumn 2020. Details TBA.
​I am currently pursuing  a tour of the show to Newcastle and then north of the border in 2021.
Okoro I've been commissioned to work with poet and author Sita Brahmachari on this tale of rebels, ravens and unbalanced wings. I am really looking forward to collaborating with this wonderful writer!
K is for Kevin I have just begun work on this new series about my experience of cancer. It is a textile piece that will involve me upping my embroidery skills!
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