Laura Potter

During the 1970s I was a small child who liked to make stuff. But I never wanted to learn tapestry. Knitting and cross stitch were magical and intricate. Tapestry was coarse and clumsy. A few of my mother’s friends made tapestry cushion covers or footstools, which seemed neither comfortable nor decorative. The canvas was stiff with a pre-printed pattern and each stitch consisted of a single ‘diagonal’ pass. As far as I was concerned, tapestry was the lazy woman’s cross stitch. Only in my 49th year do I discover that this process has its own rhythm: its own weight and sensation. It requires persistence and - like all needlework - extreme patience. My arms ache. It is not for the lazy woman.

Completed tapestries, worked from kits using pre-printed canvas, are re-covered so that the underlying images are obscured. Further labour is invested in the piece, whilst simultaneously concealing a proportion of the original work (labour).

Some of these pieces were included in DOMESTIC MONSTERS (2022).