Tapestry Travels: British Tapestry Group 20th Anniversary Exhibition

Picking up the Thread: The Past, Present & Future of Tapestry

Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh

20th October 2025 - 14th February 2026

22nd November AGM 2pm & Meet the Makers 3pm

The Market Hall. Devonport

2nd – 18th March 2026

Morley Gallery, London

13th – 25th July 2026

And

Interconnections 5 – The Thread Continues 16 August to 4 October 2025

I went to see the BTG 20^th Anniversary Exhibition at the Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries, Scotland. I saw the exhibition on its last day, Oct. 4, 2025. The Gracefield Art Centre is a small campus. There are two separate exhibition spaces. One of the exhibition spaces is a large Victorian home. The other building is modern, and it has a café and gift shop. Not knowing exactly where to start, I entered the Victorian home. I was surprised to find a second tapestry exhibition, Interconnections 5. First, I will describe Interconnections. Then, I will share the British Tapestry Group Exhibition which was in the larger modern exhibition space.

Interconnections is a group of 10 tapestry artists from Scotland, Ireland and Wales. On October 4, 2025, Clare Coyle, Elizabeth Radcliffe, and John Brennan were all in residence and weaving in the gallery space. It was delightful to meet such talented tapestry weavers and to see them weave. Each artist worked their magic on a traditional tapestry frame. Brennan was intricately blending blues to create an azure sky. Radcliffe was almost finished with the wild gaze of a tiger. Coyle’s jewel like tiny weaving was just beginning to gleam with interlocked gold and silver threads. In every direction, I was surrounded by masterful tapestries. Almost all of the tapestries were for sale. Many had been marked “sold.” In that moment, I got a real sense of the British tradition and the network of artists who preserve and pass along tapestry weaving. After sharing our contact information via Instagram, I went to see the British Tapestry Group (BTG) exhibition.

Elizabeth Radcliffe, Clare Coyle and John Brennan at Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries, Scotland.

Clare Coyle experimenting with fine weft.

A captivating cartoon creates a wild tiger.

I love the BTG exhibition for three reasons. First, it is a members’ show. Secondly, it is a show devoted to weft-faced tapestry weaving. Last, it shows the unlimited creativity of the tapestry artists. Unlike the American Tapestry Alliance, the BTG focuses its mission on tapestry weaving. There’s no Jacquard weaving, felting, or other innovations in textile fabrication. I saw the American Tapestry Alliance (ATA) biennial in August in Chicago. While I loved seeing the innovation in textile fabrication at the ATA, I’m a devoted tapestry weaver. I care about the timeless practice of going over and under the warp with weft. It is amazing and reassuring that the BTG has so many artist/weavers that care about this method of creating beauty.

The British Tapestry Group began in 2005 with five tapestry weavers. Since then, the BTG has become an international organization promoting tapestry weaving as contemporary art. For the exhibition, three exceptional tapestry weavers acted as jurors for the submissions from hundreds of members. Joan Baxter, Fiona Hutchinson and Caron Penney selected 80 tapestries for the anniversary exhibition. All tapestries, woven by hand, with bundles of wool, silk, cotton, or other fibers, demonstrate unlimited creativity of the weft-faced tapestry method. A few that caught my eye are pictured below.

Anna Olsson’s The Larch, is vast fields of color composed to show three people dancing around a tree. At first glance, the viewer may think that shapes are created with threads of linen of the same hue and saturation. Upon a closer look, you see that there are several shades of yellow, brown, red, blue, green and tan that together creates the illusion of a vast field of color. Olson collapses the perspective in her composition to a flat plain. Distance is perceived through a change of color. Yet, the variation of colors reflects or absorb light differently. This makes the tapestry lively instead of flat. I favor contemporary design that collapses space into a single plain. But, it’s easy for artists who use this technique to end up with a composition that’s simplistic. By varying the saturation of color, Olson creates a dynamic composition where the viewer perceives a foreground, middle and background. Color unifies the composition to create a scene that evokes bittersweet memories of our relationship with nature.

Anna Olsson’s The Larch 120 cm x 120 cm Linen warp and weft

 By contrast, Barbara Gardner Rowell uses classical blending techniques of mélange and chiné to create drama and tension in Occupy. This tapestry shows a woman against a graffiti painted wall. The theme echoes current events in the Middle East.  A mélange of threads of vastly different hues creates the face of the young women. Highly contrasting colors create the outlines of her features. The background is created with bright, almost neon, contrasting colors of pink and red. The word “Occupy” looks as if has just been spray-painted on a sepia toned wall. The red letters created by a mélange of pink and red threads appear to fly of the wall toward the viewer. In this tapestry, color is used to break up the space. It creates tension and an emotional response like viewing dreadful events on television.

Barbara Gardner Rowell Occupy 55 cm x 85 cm Cotton warp, wool weft

Detail of Occupy showing how color is used to break the surface.

Stripes are possibly the most abstract of design elements and the essence of simplicity. Vicky Ellis composes a landscape, a country and an idea with different colored stripes in her weft-faced design, I Wanted to Go to West Africa. Red, yellow and green evoke West Africa. To my eye, the story is told in three parts. The top third of the weaving is a story where the black and white stripes represent the first part of a journey. The red, green, yellow and ochre stripes are a vibrant place. The orange ombre square is an abstraction of the sun, or perhaps it represents the end of the day.

The next day, or another part of the story is told in the middle segment of the tapestry, here, short bands of red, yellow, green and ochre float over repeating stripes of black, grey and white. The black and white background appears to overtake the colorful bands of color. A thin orange ombre stripe replaces the sun. This effect gives the viewer a unsettling transition to the final bottom third of the tapestry.

Hovering in this large grey space, the viewer senses transition again. Red, green, yellow and ochre stripes appear again, but they do not go from selvedge to selvedge. They do not seem firm in the composition. Instead, they diminish in size until the black and white background takes over again. The composition has the rhythm of a recurring daydream. Indeed, it is like a desire we ponder, we feel and then we let go of until something reminds us of it again.

Vicky Ellis I Wanted to Go to West Africa 87cm x 115 cm Cotton and Wool

The three tapestries that I describe are different in design. However, what unites them is technique. Like all the other tapestries in the exhibition, it is the artists devotion to weaving weft over and under a warp a pass at a time to build shapes that tell a story. As a tapestry weaver myself, I can see my practice in a continuum of weavers beginning centuries ago. Though, I may not ever have a tapestry in an exhibition, I know that I am passing along an art worth preserving.

I hope that you will go see the BTG exhibition at Dovecot or one of its future venues.