Staff from the Crafts Study Centre recently attended a reception at the Government Art Collection in Whitehall, London, to celebrate the work of Mary Farmer (1940-2021), a radical textile artist of the late 1960s-1990s who created striking, abstract tapestries, as shown in the image above of Buzz On. As part of the Government Art Collection, a repository of British art that is displayed in government buildings, Buzz On is about to travel to one of the UK’s embassies.

The reception was organised by Amanda Game who alongside Gill Hedley, Jennifer Hallam and the family of Mary Farmer (notably, Farmer’s son, Zac Whitewood-Moores) have been working through her collections and archives with the intention to secure Farmer’s place in late twentieth century craft history. The CSC will be receiving Mary Farmer’s archive early in 2024 and is delighted to announce an exhibition of Farmer’s work from May - September 2024 comprised of nine works owned by the family and one from the CSC’s collections. Accompanying the reception was a showreel of Farmer’s work as well as items from the archive, which provide context for her career. This is available as a Youtube video (click here).

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