Lyndsey Ingram is delighted to present Dani Trew: To Make Shirts from Anemones at Number 16 Bourdon Street. This is Trew’s (b. 1991) first solo exhibition and presents the most comprehensive group of her paintings and drawings to date. Trew studied English Literature at the University of Oxford and was an Assistant Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2015, she was shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award, and in 2023 she graduated from the Royal Drawing School’s postgraduate programme.
The title of the show was inspired by the writings of the French philosopher and activist Simone Weil (1909-1943). As a young woman, Weil analysed ‘The Fairy Tale of the Six Swans,’ by the Brothers Grimm, which tells the story of a sister who silently sewed shirts from anemones to return her brothers to human form after they are turned into swans, drawing parallels in the narrative with the silence of women throughout history and their longstanding connection with textile production. It uses the language and process of making textiles to highlight the power of making over discourse, and as a metaphor for personal and communal metamorphosis. In Trew’s work, textiles and weaving are explored as both a way to paint entangled social and familial bonds, and also as a way to visualise disentangling ties and converting them into creative inspiration, just as disparate threads are placed into a loom and woven into a textile.
