From the Periphery

The woven vignettes of Michelle Kingdom have made an underappreciated art medium her own realm

WORDS: CHRIS UJMA

Primavera, 2019

The art sphere reflects the complexity of our time, with innumerable entry and focal points. Embroidery is creating inroads within fine art, though is still underappreciated and undervalued,” reflects Michelle Kingdom, contemplatively choosing her words as she does each of her carefully-placed threads.

“My own work doesn’t easily fall into an established art category. I am not part of a movement. I work in isolation, and have found a supportive audience mostly by happenstance. I’m trained in drawing and painting yet I’ve pursued another medium with the visionary approach of an outsider,” she adds.

It feels an odd approach to quiz an artist about why, more often than not, their niche is neglected by the wider art world. But in this case, it’s a way of unspooling why Kingdom’s majestic miniature masterpieces should be admired.

Still, Kingdom admits that the obscurity of embroidery was a place in which to find creative shelter, and she started out by creating in secrecy. “I never showed my work to anyone because I didn’t think it would be of interest,” she shrugs. “So often, textile work was overlooked as mere craft, and needlework especially was fraught with stigma. It was for grandmothers or colonial school girls; small in scale, fussy, domestic, nostalgic, and deemed irrelevant. This was precisely why I adored it and found it to be the perfect channel to tap into the murky world of the psyche.”

An art lover who grew up in a “creative house”, Kingdom studied drawing, painting and traditional fine art at university in the early 1990s, when the art world “Was dominated by work that was oversized, highly conceptual, ironic and impossibly clever. It mostly left me cold and I never thought art was a viable career path,” she recounts. “I dabbled in various textile mediums on my own, and it was around that time that I started creating these odd, tiny stories in thread.”

Those early pieces were mainly “A safe refuge off the judgmental radar of the ‘serious’ art world”, Kingdom confesses. “It was a chance to create something solely for me. I fell in love with figurative embroidery immediately. Something about it was primitive,

Without Question, 2018

strange and awkward, which struck me as compelling, raw and honest; there was something beautifully fragile, odd and otherworldly about it. Figurative embroidery seemed tailor-made for expressing secret thoughts.”

Years later, she defines her contemporary output as, “An exploration of psychological landscapes; an attempt to illuminate thoughts left unspoken or that are unable to be expressed adequately with words. By creating tiny worlds in thread, I hope to capture elusive yet persistent inner voices. Symbolism and allegory examine the juxtaposing dynamics of aspiration and limitation, expectation and loss, belonging and alienation, truth and illusion.”

While appearing as dreamscapes, it is literary snippets, memories, personal mythologies, and art historical references that all inform the imagery. She looks to medieval manuscripts, ancient art, symbolism and outsider art for inspiration.

As for the technique, sometimes Kingdom has a clear concept from the beginning, but more often has several vague images and ideas that she wishes to investigate. Her stitching is done with a “dense, intuitive, fluid approach and each piece stays in flux until the very end,” she explains.

“More and more I move away from traditional stitch technique and prefer to play with intuitive ways to recreate the genre. Fulfilling a fixed idea in my head doesn’t interest me because it is the process that I find intriguing.” Through exhibitions her work has risen to prominence, and Kingdom’s

The Descent of Beauty, 2018

All in a Row, 2019 All images courtesy Michelle Kingdom

We live in a time where everything is made by machines or exists in thin air, and for some there is a longing for handmade, tactile and personal work"

earlier point – about the tangible, ‘touch me’ appeal of her work – serves as an antidote to the constant interact with cold, tempered glass screens.

“The last few years have seen a more positive reception to fibre,” she confirms. “We live in a time where everything is made by machines or exists in thin air, and for some there is a longing for handmade, tactile and personal work. What has traditionally been perceived as ‘women’s work’ and a dying art holds a kind of nostalgia and exoticism. It is ironic because part of fibre’s success is due to our contemporary fascination with social media and online forums.”

Indeed, Kingdom’s stunning pieces have drawn a sizeable online following: Instagram posts of her finished works, 100s of hours in the making, draw (emoji-laden) gasps of appreciation for this authentic, time consuming craft.

“The myopic lens of the internet draws viewers in and equalises what may have previously been overlooked,” she relishes. “It highlights the intricacy and depth of mediums that the established art world has long ignored.”

Still, there’s also a timeless appeal of viewing art in person: the irresistible opportunity to study up-close every brush stroke, contour, or in the case of Kingdom’s work, every considered stitch. This month her latest show, Peripheries, graces the bG Gallery in Santa Monica. Yet given the miniature nature of her pieces, she admits that manipulating the scale of a white walled gallery space is “a challenge.”

The artist shares, “Part of what initially drew me to embroidery was the minute intimacy, that requires leaning in to hear it whisper. I find my work hangs most successfully when it embraces the contradiction between my work and the space, between the cloisters of the interior world and the expanse of the stark gallery walls. It requires the viewer to slow down and take pause, or not participate at all.”

It allows for deep dialogue to accompany the deft design, too, building a construct around each little scene. “I made a conscious effort to accurately explore my evolving state of mind for this show. The overriding feeling was a kind of weary descent,” she divulges about the theme. “That youthful feeling of staying up all night, believing everything was important and imminent and bound for a prompt flurry of resolutions... but then things just slowly trail away in the dark hours before dawn. That feeling when the party is finally over – when the last guests leave – when you are alone with all the stains and residues of the night before.”

Thus the theme Peripheries took shape: “The outermost edges. The boundaries. The circumference. It is a space occupied on the outskirts, deemed relatively minor. Irrelevant. It is the area in which nerves end. It is all that is visible outside of your focus. The oblique narrows of the mind’s eye.”

It is from the creative fringe where this artist emerged, and the beauty of her work is coming into focus – justly attracting both collectors and social media clicks. Using both thought-provoking narrative threads and actual thread itself, Michelle has unquestionably made embroidery her very own corner of the art kingdom. The solo exhibition ‘Peripheries’ is now showing at bG Gallery in Santa Monica. For details, visit michellekingdom.com