Banners

Banners are made from interlocking or overlapping elements of clay and driftwood, woven together to be hung on the wall.

Wellspring is a banner made from 48 clay flags woven together with silk strands.  The text is from a poem by Valentine Ackland:

And love wells within me and spills over the world

Because of the unknown dark and the great banners unfurled

Out there beyond me; that beyond which folds

About us, warm as life, and is our life, and holds

Our days and deaths and births within its sheltering folds.

Because of its elemental structure, this banner is very adaptable, and can for example be hung on a curved surface.  I wrapped it round a huge pillar in my exhibition at the Southbank Centre’s Poetry Library in 2008, but it would look just as good on a flat wall, perhaps drawn aside from a doorway.

Signed one-off. Variable installed dimensions: approx 1.7m x 1.7m. For sale £960.

Yes Banner is made from 24 strips of clay woven together with embroidery silks and hung like an open scroll between copper pipes. The text is by Muriel Rukeyser.
Signed one-off. 30cm wide x 80cm long. This work is not for sale.

This is a peace banner, or invocation.  Four strips of clay hang by hemp rope from a copper pipe.  The text reads:

And on earth peace

Signed. One-off in a group of Peace banners with this inscription, in different forms and colours. For sale from £30 to £50. Another one below:

This one’s a single wavey torn panel, unglazed with azure and ochre lettering. It’s £50.

Over the hills and far away is made from 30 clay strips hung lengthwise from a clay panel and threaded with hemp string. The text is from John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera.

Signed one-off. 20cm wide x 70cm long. This one’s sold, but it’s one of a series of panel banners, all with different inscriptions, some with gold lustre, which are £250 to £450.

The Kingfisher banner is made from 6 panels of clay hung from a bright blue washing line. The text is by Virginia Woolf:

Hail happiness! Kingfisher flashing from bank to bank

Signed one-off. Each panel 32cm; the whole banner is about 2.6m wide. This one’s not for sale at the moment, but it’s part of a group of longways banners in different texts and colours, from £300 to £500 (usually £50 a panel).

Harvest is made from strips of clay torn from the edges of another work (Stele, see Treasure in Earth page), hung between driftwood panels with hemp rope and string. The text (by Edith Sitwell) is lettered in earthy browns, ochres and golds.

Signed one-off. 42cm high x 38cm wide (max). Sold.

Tatter’d colours is a work made to hang overhead in the form of heraldic regimental colours; 8 unbleached linen flags, each 50cm wide and 90cm high, hang from hemp rope or driftwood brackets. Painted on both sides with acrylics, watercolour, ink, soot and ash, with a text by the 18th C poet Anne Finch Countess of Winchilsea, protesting against life-destroying wars:

Trail all your pikes, dispirit every drum/ March in a slow procession from afar/ Be silent, ye dejected Men of War!/ Be still the hautboys and the flute be dumb!/ Display no more in vain the lofty banner,/ For see! where on the bier before ye lies/ The pale, the fall’n, the untimely sacrifice/ To your mistaken shrine, to your false idol Honour.

Signed one-off. 8 flags, each 50cm x 90cm. This work will be in my next exhibition.

This banner’s made from strips of stoneware with text lettered in azure and gold lustre edging. (Not for sale.)

On the Love banner the text is lettered on strips hung from an incised and textured panel decorated with gold lustre. This banner is sold.

This banner again is made from strips of clay with lettered text and textured gold lustre, woven together with blue cotton string. (This banner’s also sold.)

Message is a banner made from driftwood, in this case parts of a wooden winebox washed up on the Thames beach on the Southbank. The fragments are bound together with linen tape and linen paper, and the text is from a poem by Kathleen Raine, lettered in charcoal. The ultimately optimistic text looks out to city skies, invoking Blake’s vision of an Earth redeemed by humanity’s enlightenment.

Signed one-off; 88cm x 33cm; for sale £150

(I’ll be adding some more banners to this page soon.)

To buy or enquire about any work, please leave me a note in the comments box below, or click on contact details.

All photos copyright Liz Mathews.

Permission is needed for any use of these images.