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Almost every time an exhibition is mounted a 'statement' from the artist is required. Fair enough, artists may need to say something in order to reach out to the unknown audience - to introduce themselves and their work. It only seems polite. However, the pretentiousness of the statements that accompany so many exhibitions really makes one despair. An 'art-speak' has developed which only serves to alienate rather than illuminate and so it is wonderfully refreshing to read Primmy Chorley's words that introduced her work at Ruthin Craft Centre:
"I stitch pictures about things that have happened in my life - they usually show me and my family and my pets. They're a sort of diary of memories, usually sad ones as I tend to stitch to make myself better after something awful has happened. . .
My pieces are very domestic, they are about our home, and life in our home: they are our wallpaper. I like the idea of making pieces that are timeless and that require endless hours of love to make for the home or for friends. They are part of our everyday life and will get worn and I will mend them. I like to think I am making things like women in the past making quilts - piecing together fragments of old clothing - memories held in fragments of cloth and stitch."
When we visit Primmy in her very remote cottage in Snowdonia, her embroideries glow from every wall and shelf and we see them exactly as she intends, not artfully displayed, just there, an integral part of family life. Yet, after every visit, we come away thinking - 'If only more people could see this work -. if only she could be persuaded to exhibit it -. if only her extraordinary vision could be recognised and valued further than by her own family and friends'.
Primmy Chorley is not a self-taught 'naïve' - she went through the art school system (albeit rather rebelliously) and in 1975 was awarded a First Class degree in embroidery at Goldsmiths College. It was at this point that Primmy's way of working diverged sharply from most of her contemporaries.
For the majority of graduates the finals exhibition is the beginning of a way of life, which is rarely questioned. They have ambitions to show their work in exhibitions, in trade-shows, on cat-walks - to get recognition and so to survive. Exhibiting groups are formed, gallery directors are courted or, alternatively, new anti-establishment exhibition spaces are set up and 'networking' begins. This is the artistic mainstream - it's the way the world works. Designers absolutely need this public exposure. Competitions, innovations, commissions, marketing and publicity are the essence of the design world. But what about the individual artist/maker? They too might say quite properly, 'I need to do this, to sell work, to make some sort of living'. However, the desire, or perhaps the need, to exhibit work extends well beyond the professional artist/maker. Even the humblest amateur water-colour or embroidery group will sooner or later say, 'Why don't we have an exhibition?' I wonder why?
There can be few of us who haven't thought at some point - 'Why do I put myself through this torment?' - sending off CVs and proposals, getting slides made, labelling and listing them, framing and pricing the work, packing, insuring and despatching it, waiting for the acceptance or rejection notice, collecting the work or dealing with invoices and tax returns. Yet we do it! There are some obvious bonuses of course - stepping outside one's own preoccupations, seeing one's work in a wider context, finding out if it stands up away from the comfortable familiarity of the workspace. At its best, the public exposure is a way we can reflect, meet challenges and perhaps develop our ideas. We meet people who react one way or another to our work, confirming or questioning. The thing we have made is seen through other eyes and it can be daunting.
To return to Primmy Chorley and the choices she has made, undoubtedly Primmy has always had a great distaste for the commercialisation and shifting fashions of art. What is also very interesting is that she seems to have felt no need to join the cause of freeing women's art from its domestic associations. At a time when embroiderers especially were fighting hard to have their work accepted as a serious art form rather than as a home-based hobby, Primmy never doubted that what she made was essentially an integral part of her family life and yet could, at the same time, express strongly felt emotions and ideas.
Clothes were home-made out of necessity and gifts were made for friends. She made hundreds of 'dolls' which have a rather enigmatic and uneasy air about them. Recently she has made a whole series of 'tea-cosies' in which she tells stories and speaks of strong human emotions. Does this 'domestication' relegate Primmy's work to the margins? Jennifer Harris says (in her catalogue essay), 'What began as a brave attempt at college to throw off tradition and precedent increasingly appears to subvert and, in a sense, challenge the very definition of what constitutes value in art', and, 'In common with others who have produced art outside the cultural norm, there is a sense in which Primmy Chorley's art is not at the margins but at the very centre of what artistic creativity can begin to convey'.
It is good for all of us to be reminded that it is the private passion that matters above all else and so we can be grateful to Philip Hughes (Director of Ruthin Craft Centre) that he was able to persuade Primmy Chorley to bring her work to his gallery. It was not an easy exhibition to mount; there could even have been a temptation to try and reproduce the domestic clutter, to do an 'installation' so in vogue with many other galleries. Instead, Philip Hughes stuck to his principles - 'It's the work that matters, the display should be so clear and simple that it almost isn't noticed, a support not an intrusion'.
It will be interesting to find out how Primmy felt when she saw her work as a one-woman show in a gallery for the first time.
Primmy Chorley's exhibition was at Ruthin Craft Centre, North Wales, from 7 April - 13 May. A set of postcards and a 36-page, full colour catalogue with an essay by Jennifer Harris are available from Ruthin Craft Centre, tel. 01824 704774 (overseas +44 1824 704774) for details. The catalogue is also available from the Embroiderers' Guild.
This article is from The World of Embroidery, Volume 52 No.4, © Audrey Walker.