Discover an innovative new connection between textiles, nature and sustainability
By fusing traditional craft with horticulture, our Design Makar for June, textile designer Alice-Marie Archer, knits sculptures designed to grow life without soil – also known as hydroponics.
Join us to hear how her commission for the Garden Futures: Designing with Nature exhibition draws on Scottish knitting traditions, local yarns and natural dyes to create a plastic-free tapestry of plants that will be gifted to the land.
Visitor note: This event includes visual content that may affect those with trypophobia.
About the speaker
Alice-Marie Archer is a multidisciplinary artist, scientist, engineer, and designer known for her exciting architectural textile creations. Alice was the 2020 recipient of the UK Textile Society Professional Development Award and is an active member of Seam Collective, a contemporary textile group of emerging and established textile practitioners. She is a research fellow with Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems and is also a fellow with the School for Social Entrepreneurs.
Having worked in aquaponic farming for nearly 10 years before starting her own creative practice, Alice’s work takes a craft/materials-led approach that encourages us to examine our relationship with surrounding ecologies and species. Considering her creations to be hybrid worlds coexistent with nature, Alice uses natural fibres like sheep’s wool to make knitted hydroponic sculptures, offering sites for seed germination and plant growth without soil cultivation.
Examples of Alice’s work are displayed as part of the major exhibition Garden Futures: Designing with Nature in the Upper Foyer of V&A Dundee.