The Christine Risley Award Winner 2022: Alice Birch

The Christine Risley Award is a cash prize awarded by the Goldsmiths Textile Collection & Constance Howard Gallery to a graduating Goldsmiths student for outstanding work relating to textiles, in memory of Christine Risley.

The Christine Risley Award Winner 2022

Alice Birch

The Goldsmiths Textile Collection and Constance Howard Gallery are delighted to announce the 2022 Christine Risley Award Winner as BA Design graduate, Alice Birch.

In her work, Woven Journeys, Alice explored the ways in which textiles can be used as a visual language through hand craft. Inspired by the origins of the jacquard looms with their connection to coded language, and the way in which domestic crafts can translate personal data, using home weaving Alice formulated her own visual language as a way of taking ownership of self-surveillance.

Our guest judge, Dr Janice Cheddie (researcher and writer), writes of Alice’s work that it ‘… demonstrated a vibrant, complex and nuanced engagement with textiles - in terms of materiality, mark making, data collection, community formation and textiles as a vehicle for memory, archiving and formation of the self.

The realisation of the idea remained at all times engaged with the materiality of textiles -whilst incorporating dialogues with data collection, mapping and local craft communities- presented with a lightness of touch within the final work. Furthermore, the recipient of the 2022 Christine Risley Award, was able to present her work deftly combining an understanding of the presentation of textiles within a gallery-setting and the display and presentation of her research, processes and providing a template for future work and preservation.’ 

Alice Birch’s work will be on display at the Constance Howard Gallery, 26 September – 28 October 2022, Mon-Fri, 11am-5pm. Opening reception 30 September, 5-8pm.