This year Out of the Fold members have decided to explore working collaboratively. As individual artists we can sometimes find the process solitary, and so when we meet together, we become inspired by others’ approaches and ideas. In January this year we were randomly allocated into pairs to work on our next exhibition pieces with the subject ‘Material Dialogues’.

This is the first of a series of blogs charting our endeavours as pairs. We hope you will enjoy them, sign up for the blogs if you haven’t already, and come to our exhibition at St Margaret’s Gallery in Norwich this September!

The Flow of Ideas

by Rachael King and Jenny Lam

We didn’t know each other beforehand, as Rachael only joined the group in January. So it was important for us to get together and talk about our methods, which materials we used and how we could produce a successful collaboration that combined our skills.

We found many connections during our conversations and exchange of ideas. We chose to depict the river that ran between us as a connecting element for our piece. The river Blackwater is close to Rachael’s home near Shipdam, flows through Norwich as the river Yare, then past Jenny’s house near Reedham before joining the sea at Great Yarmouth.

We could both envisage the context and the direction of our design quite quickly, and we felt very comfortable with our planning. Looking at our past exhibition work there were strong similarities in the colours we liked, our preference for dimensional elements and creating larger-scale pieces. We agreed that re-purposed materials and natural found objects from the river and beach would be included in our work. It was important to represent the flow of ideas between us in the flow of the water.

Due to the ease of dialogue and the speed at which we agreed on the direction of the work, we decided to create one piece that combined each other’s techniques including embellishing, dyed fabrics, breakdown printing, machine and hand stitching and dimensional appliqué.