Celebrating the power and importance of female creativity

Shelly Goldsmith’s practice investigates the power of cloth to explore psychological states, emotions and conceptual ideas around identity and familial female experience.

With a feminist viewpoint she unpicks established psychological theory to better understand human interactions, how we live our life and what shapes us. Clothing and fabric imbued with memory and meaning, ordinary day-to-day routines, or ceremonies and weddings to powerfully emotive life events, such as migration and displacement. Through her distinctive vision she transforms textiles into potent vehicles of storytelling, fabricating scenes saturated with the tidal seascapes of her present or locations and tokens of her past. 

Goldsmith’s work is marked by meticulous craftsmanship and experimentation, re-appropriating and manipulating discarded synthetic clothing. In the Dresses for Giants series, Goldsmith reclaims 1970s polyester wedding dresses, exploring the psychological theory ‘Locus of Control’ to understand how we locate our sense of self. Utilising complex and innovative dye-sublimation processes methods she uses dispersal dye in 3 states (digitally printed dye, hand painted & vaporised dye) to imprint the ghostly remnants of voluminous dresses in deep inky blue. 

Goldsmith is an established fine art textile artist. She is recognised internationally, exhibiting in galleries and museums across the UK, Europe, Japan and U.S.A. Her work is held in a number of esteemed public collections including the V&A Museum, The Whitwoth Gallery and The Crafts Council. Goldsmith is a Royal College of Art alumnus, and the recipient of the Jerwood Prize and the Vlieseline Fine Art Textile Award, an international prize which recognises concept driven and gallery context textiles.

Shelly Goldsmith: Shop Available Artwork