Lorna Hamilton-Brown MBE is an English artist, researcher, filmmaker and educator who has been called "the Banksy of knitting".[1] Her primary medium is machine knitting.[2] She is an advocate for the recognition of Black people's contributions to the crafts of knitting and crochet and is a member of the BIPOC in Fiber initiative, for which she designed the logo.[3] She is also a member of the Vogue Knitting Diversity Advisory Council.[4]
Lorna Hamilton-Brown MBE | |
|---|---|
| Education | Royal College of Art |
| Known for | textile art |
| Website | https://www.lornahamiltonbrown.com/ |
Career
editHamilton-Brown was taught to knit at the age of five by her mother, who had emigrated to England from Jamaica.[4][1] She earned a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in digital multimedia at De Montfort University in Leicester in 2002.[5] She was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2005 New Year Honours "for services to the community in Leicestershire".[6]
Because of her practice of placing her work in non-gallery public places where she hopes to spark responses from viewers she has been called the Banksy of knitting by Lauren O'Farrell, founder of the English graffiti knitting Knit the City collective.[1] An early example was "Out of the Blue", a pair of life-size panels depicting two young people, which she created after the London Riots of 2011, and displayed at the seafront in Hastings.[7]
In 2018 she earned a Master of Arts in Textiles from the Royal College of Art with a thesis entitled Myth: Black People Don't Knit: The Importance of Art and Oral Histories for Documenting the Experiences of Black Knitters.[5] In October 2017 she was Maker in Residence at University College London's Institute of Making.[8]
As part of her MA work at the Royal College of Art Hamilton-Brown made a music video entitled Knitting the Blues about the therapeutic value of knitting for people suffering from anxiety and depression. In it, the protagonist feels better after learning to make "tension birds" based on simple knitted squares.[5][9] Hamilton-Brown's tension birds were included in Visible Mending, an animated film directed by Samantha Moore for the British Film Institute and featured in The New York Times in 2023.[10]
In 2022 Hamilton-Brown was one of five Black and Asian women artists whose work was featured in We Gather, an exhibition at the Crafts Council[11][12] Her piece "We Mek", which was commissioned for the exhibition and added to the Crafts Council's collection, is a machine knitted magazine cover. Hamilton-Brown stated that the style of the illustration, which pays homage to Angela Davis, was inspired by the photographs of James Barnor for Drum, a South African magazine.[13]
In October 2022 Hamilton-Brown produced "Playing the Race Card", an exhibition in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex of Black artists' work whose goal was to “replace a culture of victim blaming with a celebration of diversity.”[14]
In 2023 she organized and participated in "We Out Here", an exhibition at the Hastings Contemporary by 6 Black Hastings artists of Caribbean heritage.[1] For the exhibition Hamilton-Brown created a new "We Mek" magazine cover commemorating the 75th anniversary of the arrival in England of people from the Caribbean on board the Empire Windrush.[15]
References
edit- ^ a b c d Harper, Sophie (26 July 2023). "Black People Don't Knit: Lorna Hamilton-Brown MBE". Get Hastings. No. 2. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
- ^ Armstrong, Reuben (Director), Jamie Neale (Director) (2016). The Artist and the Machine (Documentary).
- ^ "Lorna Hamilton-Brown". BIPOC in Fiber. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
- ^ a b "Diversity Advisory Council:". Vogue Knitting. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
- ^ a b c "Lorna Hamilton-Brown MBE". Royal College of Art. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
- ^ "New Year Honours: Order of the British Empire". The Independent. 31 December 2004. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
- ^ "Out of the Blue". Lorna Hamilton-Brown. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
- ^ "Maker in Residence – Lorna Hamilton Brown". Institute of Making. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
- ^ Lorna Hamilton-Brown (Director) (26 June 2018). Knitting the Blues. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
- ^ Moore, Samantha (26 December 2023). "Knitting Helps Us Embrace Life's Messy Imperfections". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
- ^ "We Gather: 12 January - 12 March". Crafts Council. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
- ^ McKenzie Johnston, Fiona (7 January 2022). "Why you should incorporate textile art into your home". House & Garden. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
- ^ "WE MEK Knitted Magazine Cover – Issue One". Crafts Council Collections Online. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
- ^ "Flipping the Card". Hastings Independent Press. Hastings, UK. 21 October 2023. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
- ^ "We Out Here". Hastings Contemporary. Retrieved 2 January 2024.