Second Skin

Second Skin

Arrange Whatever Pieces Come Your Way
Lisa Milroy
Julian Stair
Ann Sutton

Opening Reception: Wednesday 4th June 2025, 6-8pm

Sid Motion Gallery in collaboration with Tom Cole is delighted to announce Second Skin, a group exhibition that brings together four artists who explore traces of personal and collective experiences through the domestic, the familiar and the everyday. A range of languages and materials are engaged to evoke the body in much of the work, and its implication is evident in its absence as much as presence.

The show addresses the inherent memories, relationships and human experiences found in the vernacular of life. Arrange Whatever Pieces Come Your Way is a partnership between Sheelagh Boyce and Annabelle Harty, which celebrates their shared interest in architecture through the creation of handsewn quilts and reconstructed fabric works. Working with friends’ used clothing and drawing inspiration from iconic buildings, AWPCYW transform worn fabrics into physical forms that address and command space. This results in intimate stories, made tangible by meticulously abstracting and restructuring fabrics worn and loved by family and friends. The quilts are material tales narrating architectural structures and their historical sentiment to fabrics and their owners.

Lisa Milroy explores how painted depictions of objects can spark associations, leading the viewer to poetically charged connections and memories. The term ‘still life’ signals the fundamental experience of painting for Milroy, encapsulating her fascination with the relation between stillness and movement, contemplation and action. Milroy is particularly interested in fashion, frequently painting clothes and shoes as poignant markers of time or souvenirs, as well as exploring how they offer forms of protection, with use and display linked to ceremony and ritual.

Julian Stair's exacting, minimalist ceramic works explore the underlying aspects of human ritual, encompassing both the domestic and monumental. Stair’s engagement with the pot frequently promotes an experiential understanding of pottery, as something to be used rather than merely admired.The work addresses a host of lived experiences, ranging from our everyday relationship with pots to the very fundamentals of our existence.

Ann Sutton has explored the potential of the woven world since the 1960’s. Her pioneering and endless experimentation has pushed the boundaries of what can be ‘woven’ and how the necessary geometry of warp and weft can become the starting point for a wider enquiry into systems, pattern, order, balance and harmony. Innovation has shaped Ann Sutton’s practice, being one of the first practitioners in her field to realise the potential of computers in creating loom-woven textiles. Sutton moves from miniature textiles to large-scale hangings, using materials as diverse as silk, wool, nylon filament, metal thread and perspex. The exhibition is the second in a series of four collaborative exhibitions between the gallery and Tom Cole. Their partnership for the exhibitions builds on the spirit of collaboration that has characterised the gallery’s exhibition programme to date. The exhibition series highlights historical and conceptual overlaps across an intergenerational range of artists with materially rich practices.

Artist Biographies  

Arrange Whatever pieces Come Your Way
Sheelagh Boyce (b. 1969, UK) & Annabelle Harty (b. 1965, UK). Recent solo & duo exhibition include Places, Pieces: Arrange Whatever pieces Come Your Way & Martin Boyce, Linn Lühn, Düsseldorf (2023), Arrange Whatever pieces Come Your Way, Tanya Leighton, Los Angeles (2022), Arrange Whatever pieces Come Your Way, The Modern Institute, Glasgow, (2022), Arrange Whatever pieces Come Your Way, Linn Lühn, Düsseldorf (2021), Gather and Arrange, Mount Stuart Visual Arts Programme, Bute (2021), Glasgow Print Studio, GI Festival, Glasgow, (2021), Arrange whatever pieces Come Your Way, Lant Street, London, (2019). Recent group exhibitions include Craft, curated by Nicolas Trembley, Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich, (2023), Space Forgets You, Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, (2022), Hoi Polloi, London Craft Week, London (2019), Design Exhibition Scotland, Edinburgh (2019). Their work is included public collections such as Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf.

Lisa Milroy (b. 1959, Canada). Recent solo exhibitions include Paper Safari, One Off Contemporary Art Gallery, Nairobi (2024), Correspondence, Kate MacGarry (2023), London, If the Shoe Fits/Bien dans ses Pompes – Peintures de Lisa Milroy, Frac Occitanie, Montpellier, Montpellier, (2021). Her recent group exhibitions include Contemporary Song: Works from the Mário Teixeira da Silva Collection, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, (2024) The Shape of Things: Still Life in British Art, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, (2024) À toi de faire, ma mignonne, Musée Picasso, Paris, (2023), Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City, an Arts Council Collection touring exhibition curated by Lubaina Himid, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, (2022), A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920 – 2020, Whitechapel Gallery, London, (2022). Her work is include national and international public collections, including Arts Council Collection, British Council, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Deutsche Bank Collection, Contemporary Art Society, Tate and Daros Collection.

Julian Stair (b. 1955, UK). Recent solo exhibitions include Art, Death and the Afterlife, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, (2023), Equivalenze, Fondazione ICA Milano, Milan (2019), Equivalence, Corvi-Mora Gallery, London (2018), Quotidian, Corvi-Mora Gallery, London (2014-15) and Quietus: The Vessel, Death and the Human Body, Touring exhibition, MIMA, National Museum Wales Cardiff, Winchester Cathedral, Somerset House, London (2012-16). Recent group exhibitions include Deep Horizons, MIMA (2023), New Areas, Walmer Yard, London, & Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire (2023), Other Lives, Oxford Ceramics Gallery, (2022), Lust auf Lustheim: Meissen Inspired Modern Ceramics, Schloss Lustheim, Munich (2022), Rob Barnard, Robert Burnier, Julian Stair, Corvi-Mora Gallery, London (2021), Inner Lives, Branch Museum, Richmond, Virginia, (2021), Started it in England: Leach and Hamada, in Two Ways, Mashiko Museum, (2020). His work is included in national public collections such as V&A Museum, British Museum, American Museum of Art & Design, New York, Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Kolumba Museum, e, Grassi Museum and The Fitzwilliam Museum

Ann Sutton (b. 1935, UK). Selected solo exhibitions include On From Weaving – A Survey, New Art Centre, Salisbury, (2021), On the Grid: touring Gallery Oldham, The Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent (2016-18), Looking Through, Winchester Gallery ((2016-18)) Guest Stand: Collect,  Saatchi Galleries, Crafts Council, London, (2015), Counterpoint,  Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London (2014). Selected group exhibitions include The Maker’s Eye, Crafts Council, London (2021), The Most Real Thing, New Art Centre, Roche Court, (2018), Taste Contemporary Craft,  Geneva, (2016), Beauty is the First Test, touring Pump House Gallery, National Centre of Craft and Design, Bilston Craft Gallery (2012-13). Her work is included in national and international public collections such as Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Crafts Council, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Sainsbury Centre, Museum of Modern Art, Finland, National Museum, Stockholm.