Artist Celia Pym

Working with garments that belong to individuals as well as items in museum archives, [Pym] has extensive experience with the spectrum and stories of damage, from small moth holes to larger accidents with fire.

Her interests concern the evidence of damage, and how repair draws attention to the places where garments and cloth wear down and grow thin. In clothing, this is often to do with use and how the body moves.

She explores the difficulties of mending other people’s clothes, the materials used for mending, and making damage visible. Pym’s tools are scissors, yarn and a sharp needle.

“Darning is small acts of care and paying attention. The damage, in a way, does the work for me” she explains. “I respond to it. The mending is slow work to hold the damage in place.”