Anna Ray’s colourful textiles take over London’s former silk weaving district

Textile artist Anna Ray – the winner of this year’s Brookfield Properties Crafts Council Collection Award – is heralding the country’s emergence from lockdown with an explosion of colour and energy. From 21 June, her large-scale works will be displayed across two Brookfield Properties venues in London, 99 Bishopsgate and nearby Aldgate Tower, in a vibrant celebration of textiles and our newfound freedom.

‘I’m interested in rhythm, symmetry, patterns that expand and contract,’ says Ray. ‘A lot of my work isn’t fixed and it might be arranged in another way in a different space. It has a vulnerability in that way, although the finessing is important as well.’ The exhibition is a homecoming of sorts for Ray, whose ancestry traces back to French Huguenot silk weavers working in the area in the 1700s. The exhibition’s title, On Tenterhooks, too, is a play on the phrase meaning nervous anticipation – which feels apt as we ease out of lockdown – and the hooked nails found on wooden tenter frames, which were used as far back as the 14th century in the process of making woollen cloth.

At Brookfield Properties' 99 Bishopsgate, the exhibition – presented in partnership with the Crafts Council – spotlights Ray’s recent textile practice, including her prize-winning works Capture and Weave, made during the Covid-19 lockdown last year, as well as Bloom, depicting the centre of a daisy and created in homage to Maureen Hodge’s 1976 tapestry Hill for my Friend. The show continues over at Aldgate Tower, located on the edge of Spitalfields and the former home of London’s silk weaving industry (and Ray’s ancestors), where the focus pivots to the artist’s making process and use of materials. Highlights include the liquorice-hued Madame Bovary, shown in the UK for the first time, and works from her Offcut series.

Brookfield Properties has championed creative industries for over three decades, supporting visual art, theatre, music, film and dance through its multifaceted arts programmes. The Canada-born, global business stages hundreds of cultural experiences and exhibitions across its properties annually – all free to the public. ‘Art has this transformative capacity for people to stop and consider the spaces that they might otherwise be rushing through in the city,’ says Saff Williams, marketing manager and curator at Brookfield Properties. ‘It’s about sparking that moment of curiosity.’

Ultimately, Ray’s work was selected not only for the artist’s impactful use of colour, scale and composition, but for its celebratory and energetic qualities. ‘The works have a presence and a playfulness, and are perfect symbols of optimism,’ says Annabelle Campbell, curator of creative partnerships and programmes at the Crafts Council. ‘Ray employs incredible skill, dexterity and creative vision in her making.’

Ray scooped the Brookfield Properties Crafts Council Collection Award earlier this year at Collect art fair. The award – launched at Collect in 2020 – is a career-boosting prize for makers working in Britain and unique for the sector as it supports not only the individual artist, but their gallery and the Crafts Council. Ray and House on Mars Gallery have together received a total of £25,500 and her works, Capture and Weave, have been acquired for the Crafts Council Collection. ‘In a difficult year, it was fuel for the fire,’ says Ray of her win. ‘It’s been an incredible boost – the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.’

Anna Ray follows in the footsteps of artist Matt Smith, who won the 2020 Brookfield Properties Crafts Council Collection Award and also had a solo show at 99 Bishopsgate.

On Tenterhooks runs from 21 June – 1 October at 99 Bishopsgate and Aldgate Tower in London