Celia Pym

Celia Pym is an artist living and working in London. She has been exploring damage and repair in textiles since 2007. Working with garments that belong to individuals as well as items in museum archives, she 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.”

She works with lots of repairing of clothing with the use of bright and colourful thread and fabric to mend patches and holes. She developed her obsession of visible mending when she inherited her great-uncles worn-out jumper which had holes in the forearms where he would lean on his armchair while drawing.

I like Celia Pyms work as it creates life for an older garment and brings colour into the piece giving it new life and further extends the lifespan of the garment. This shows the amazing sustainability in which Celia Pym embraces in her artwork and fashion designs.