Elevating everyday life to art in new exhibition

Textile artist Eira Chidgey celebrates domestic life in a series of stunning large canvases in the Go Your Own Way exhibition, opening in May at Newcastle’s Timeless Textiles Gallery.

The exhibition brings together work from 2007 – at the start of Chidgey’s creative career – and more recent works, produced over the last 12 months. It captures the artist’s journey, from her home in England to Australia, where she moved, with her husband, five years ago. They settled in Newcastle in 2014.

“Now in my 30s and living on the other side of the world with two small children, this exhibition is a celebration of the confidence you grow on the journey through life,” Chidgey says. “That confidence provides the liberation to just go your own way.”

The large-scale canvases in the Go Your Own Way exhibition are Chidgey’s artistic reaction to her world.

“My children are my biggest influence right now. Their beach art, sculptures, drawings and arrangements around the house and garden provide constant and joyous inspiration for my own artwork,” she says.

As a mother, Chidgey is motivated by a growing awareness of the need to preserve the environment for future generations. Her attempts to recycle and reduce waste have resulted in a fascinating use of mixed, non-traditional materials, found items and even her children’s creations within her large abstract canvases.

Chidgey, born and raised in England, studied Contemporary Applied Arts at University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. Her work has attempted to celebrate the beauty of the imperfect and the everyday. In this collection of work, traditional textile processes and stitch are manipulated and combined with other materials such as paint, paper and salvaged materials to create mixed media explorations.

Go Your Own Way, an exhibition by Eira Chidgey, runs from 15 May to 9 June with the opening on16 May 6-8pm.