Clare Dudeney: Held In Motion

Held in Motion, is Clare Dudeney’s most expansive solo presentation to date, bringing together various practices – with a focus on movement, transformation, and interconnection.

Dudeney’s work explores the ever-changing nature of life – how we are shaped by our relationships, environments, and unseen connections – dissolving rigid boundaries and revealing a world in flux.

Through abstract woven terrains, ceramic weavings, and large-scale fabric collages, Dudeney captures the ebb and flow of thoughts, memories, and emotions. Drawing from her past observations of nature, particularly rock formations, where micro topographies can appear vast – she transforms these shifting landscapes into tactile form.

The long fabric collages and the tile mural draw inspiration from line drawings made in the ancient woodlands of Eltham, tracing the negative spaces between trees, branches, and other natural forms. These works are informed by the Japanese concept of Ma – the meaningful space between things.

The philosophy of Kintsugi, which embraces the beauty of repair by mending broken pottery with gold, also shapes the approach to the collages. Sheets of cotton are cut apart, painted and reassembled with handmade fabric tape, their visible joins at the back echoing the original drawn lines and honouring the process of fragmentation and repair.

Clare has translated her weaving practice into ceramic sculptures. These intricate pieces create magnified swatches, featuring looping, entwined threads and delicately trailing colour-glazed strands. The hard surfaces hold traces of past soft gestures.

The works invite close attention, edges blur and light glows through. Soft, subtle hues and delicate mark-making create organic forms that emerge and dissolve, networks woven together. Repetition and variation reveal an ongoing process, each piece a fragment of a larger exploration. There is an intimacy in their making, a dialogue between control and freedom. In this space of openness and entanglement, meaning is shaped by connection, experience and perception.