exhibitions & events 2021

Arrange Whatever Pieces Come Your Way

For Glasgow International 2021, Glasgow Print Studio is delighted to present the first major exhibition in Scotland of large-scale quilts by Arrange Whatever Pieces Come Your Way, the collaborative powerhouse of London-based Annabelle Harty and Sheelagh Boyce, who lives and works in Glasgow.

Hand-sewn over hundreds of hours, Harty and Boyce's abstract works are the physical manifestation of a long friendship between the pair. Influenced by collected images, travels, ideas and memories, they use old and loved clothes from friends and family and respond, either in intimate detail or through a broader contextual approach, to the architecture of a building, place or the garments themselves.

“We value the wear of the used clothes and the memories and secrets they hold and try to bring these into the narrative of the quilt. A dark square exposed behind an unpicked faded pocket reminds one of the younger garment/person. The crisp shadow, along with the faded pocket help to tell both sides to the garments stories - much like the front and back of the quilts themselves. We work closely together, and have created a mutual way of seeing that works exclusively to neither of us. Glasgow Print Studio seems the perfect space to launch them out into the world to be viewed, in most cases, for the first time in the flesh.”

Harty and Boyce’s exhibition is a modernist nod to the Glasgow International’s 2021 theme of 'Attention' and mirrors the collaborative nature and materiality of printmaking.

“There is a happy unity between our work, and the work of the Print Studio, under the theme of GI 2021 ‘Attention’. Having been working with Scott Campbell, the master printer, on a print for the show, we have noticed many parallels with the working processes - an intimate layering of ideas that make up the whole, where all the constituent parts remain visible - but only if you look for them.”

Claire Forsyth, GPS Workshop Manager, said: “we are privileged to host the first major UK exhibition of quilts by Arrange Whatever Pieces Come Your Way. We were drawn not just to their striking, modernist beauty but to the narratives, memories & materiality interwoven amongst them. They are the embodiment of hours of shared collaborative labour; planned and yet still spontaneous and responsive. In these quilts we feel the spirit of Anni Albers, ‘Being creative is not so much the desire to do something as the listening to that which wants to be done: the dictation of the materials’ In these works, Boyce and Harty, have listened and found a coalescence of the most magical kind.”

Read reviews of the show here and here.

Sheelagh Boyce lives and works in Glasgow. She studied Education and taught in Primary Schools in Glasgow for 20 years. She lived in Berlin with her family from 2005 – 2007. Boyce started quilting in 2013 before establishing Arrange Whatever Pieces Come Your Way with Annabelle Harty in 2016. She has a strong interest in architecture, art and design. Through the combination of teaching and nurturing her interest in the arts she has developed a strong understanding of the importance of design and communication.

Annabelle Harty lives and works in London and Wiltshire. Having lived in Havana, Cuba for a year she moved to Glasgow to study Architecture at the Mackintosh. In her year out Harty worked for Martorell, Bohigas and Mackay in Barcelona on the Olympic Village, before returning to complete her Diploma in Florence and Glasgow. After graduating, she worked for Benson + Forsyth for five years on the Museum of Scotland project in Edinburgh. She is a model maker and skilled crafts person and in 2002 formed Henderson Press, a publishing business, through which she handmade artist’s books. She established Harty and Harty Architects in 1997 with her partner, Stephen Harty, where she still practices.

Selected for Glasgow International 2021 Across the City Programme.

Arrange Whatever Pieces Come Your Way launches on Friday 11th June and runs until Saturday 31st July. It is free to view and can be visited during GPS opening hours, six days a week; Tuesday - Saturday, 10.30am - 5.30pm. (exhibition also open Sunday 13th June 10.30am - 5.30pm)

Image: Sheelagh Boyce & Annabelle Harty, 'Quilt 1', 163cm X 127cm, Cotton and Bamboo 2016, Plantation shirt Issey Miyake. Sheelagh Boyce & Annabelle Harty, 'Quilt 23', 280cm X W 235cm, Cotton and Bamboo 2020, Convent St Peter’s Seminary, Cardross. Gillespie, Kidd and Coia.Sheelagh Boyce and Annabelle Harty at work in Glasgow Print Studio Gallery (photography Fiona Watson). Front and back of Sheelagh Boyce & Annabelle Harty, 'Quilt 15', 160cm X 164cm, Cotton, Bamboo, 2019, Overalls and Aprons Manchester Magistrates Courts, Brian Henderson, YRM in Glasgow Print Studio Ground Floor Gallery window (photography Claire Forsyth).