Featured Image: Cheryl Hutchens, Bodice panel (The blight and ruin), 2022, Blister packs, toothpaste tubes, plastic mesh, meat trays, Play-Doh lids, chocolate box liner, sushi trays, margarine tub, infant formula lid, biscuit packaging, milk bottle lids, shampoo tube, plastic tubing, make-up packaging, toy packaging, beads, cotton, thread, 87 x 66 x 2 cm, Image by Grant Hancock. Courtesy: Praxis Artspace

Cheryl Hutchens’ work is usually inspired by contemporary science but ‘The End Begins’ sees her taking a step sideways into science-fiction. The themes for this series of work are drawn from texts exploring dystopian futures and post-apocalyptic scenarios. Such stories might once have seemed extraordinary and impossible but recent history has made apocalyptic disasters seem just that bit more likely. These works stitch together ideas relating to apocalyptic futures, fashion history, throwaway culture and make do and mend.

Fashion as a response to events and cultural movements has always interested Hutchens, with textile design often providing a form of communication throughout history. The End Begins imagines craftspeople making wearable items for the survivors of a civilisation ending disaster and posits the question: What would they make with the materials we left behind in response to the future we might bequeath to them?

Opening: 30 June, 6pm