In this exhibition as part of London Craft Week, textile artist Cecilia Charlton displays large-scale site-specific weavings in the Garden Museum’s historic nave.

Inspired by flowers that are often found in British gardens and that have personal relevance to the artist (hydrangea, peony, lily, and lavender), viewers will be invited to contemplate the relationship between textiles and gardening; both practices involving deep sensitivity to another form of growth, and a process of slowing down as it takes time for a garden or a weaving to take shape.

The installation also investigates a further idea around the capacity for textiles and gardens to store memories. Our sense of smell connects directly to the limbic system, an area of our brain responsible for emotion and memory. Textiles as well forge a seemingly inextricable relationship to our lives — the memory of print on a curtain, the feeling of a loved one’s jacket — being surrounded by textiles throughout our lives leads to a deep-seeded knowledge and intimacy of textiles as a material. The reference to the distinctively smelling flora, rendered in thread, will provide a space of reverence for the harmonic materials of flowers and fiber.