Agata Read

My practice and research explore the process of intervening in the material structure of a photograph, incorporating the relationship between photography, feminism, and textile craft. I create unique, hand quilted and embroidered pieces using photographs and yarn.

Photography and thread each have their own characteristics with which they impregnate photo-embroidery. Thread is tactile and haptic, while photography elevates the visual, and emphasises the content. Photography is rooted in technology, while working with thread owes more to traditions of craft, with strong historical connections to women.

Feminism is the clip that holds the thread and the photograph together in my work. Feminism perceived, apart from philosophical references, as an everyday experience of the social role of a woman, a mother and caregiver.

I aim to challenge the artificial divisions within the creative world and demonstrate photography’s potential to be metamorphosed into another medium.

I am inspired by works that disrupt formal and material expectations of the medium when the author is equally focused on the content and the process of interference in the structure.