Welcome to Episode 14 of Pattern Portraits!

Lauren Godfrey chats with Romy St Clair, one half of the coolest florists in London, SAGE flowers, about collaboration, the similarities between flowers and clubbing and being a recovering minimalist.

Together with Iona Mathieson, Romy has grown a phenomenal creative business, making playful bouquets and incredible floral installations. Storming onto the scene only a few years ago with a tiny budget and a few stems in a carpark in Peckham they have since collaborated with brands including Gucci, Fenty, Frieze and Nike to name but a handful. They set up an initiative called FutureFlowers which offers funded placements to diversify and decolonise floristry and they have written a book called The Art of Starting in which they share their secrets to success.

Not only are the SAGE girls amazing businesswomen and florists but also impeccable dressers and bring pattern and fun into all they do! Romy has chosen a beautiful selection of sentimental patterns including a fiery Louisa Ballou dress worn for their book launch, a monogrammed Ralph Lauren hoodie belonging to her little boy, a Chunni she wore for her engagement party, an inherited sari and the happiest flower bag for Louis Vuitton by Takashi Murakami.

You can see all of Romy’s patterns and more now on instagram @patternportraitspodcast

‘Flowers This Way' - The PATTERN PORTRAIT print artwork to accompany Romy’s interview and featuring the patterns we discuss is available to buy now at www.laurengodfrey.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Episode 13 of Pattern Portraits!

Lauren Godfrey chats with artist Madeleine Pledge about stripes as borders, patterns as graphs and Virginia Woolf’s concept of frock consciousness.

Madeleine Pledge is an artist working sculpturally, employing a myriad of processes including knitting, sewing, casting, ceramics and printmaking. Her work stretches and contorts, leaves a physical impression, can be worn or perhaps has been. It wraps itself around and loops through, balancing and poising. Her work revels in material elements of fashion and from the history of design, reworking and reinterpreting them as a means to understand systems of production, power and authorship.

Madeleine’s take on pattern is a really broad and conceptual one, the patterns she has chosen are closely linked with her work and include childhood polkadot dungarees, a stretch knit stripe from a photograph by artist Sylvie Fleury, a pair of op art and binary code inspired balaclavas made by Madeleine after the artist Rosemarie Trockel, zig zag stripes by Missoni, and a trio of striped knitted garments by JW Anderson.

You can see all of Madeleine’s patterns and more on instagram @patternportraitspodcast

‘Maximum Baggage’ - The PATTERN PORTRAIT print artwork to accompany Madeleine’s interview and featuring the patterns we discuss is available to buy now at www.laurengodfrey.co.uk

References:

Christine Keeler chair https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O76201/the-keeler-chair-chair-unknown/

Jade Monserrat https://www.bosseandbaum.com/artists/jade-montserrat/

Ann Anlin Cheng - Second Skin, Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface https://global.oup.com/academic/product/second-skin-9780197748381?cc=gb&lang=en&

Charlie Porter - Bring No Clothes https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/453043/bring-no-clothes-by-porter-charlie/9781802061147

Bridget Riley - original article from 1965 - https://www.artnews.com/art-news/retrospective/bridget-riley-perception-is-the-medium-1965-12638/

Alice Channer https://alicechanner.com/

Weaponised Glamour at Case Study Project Space - https://www.madeleinepledge.com/weaponized-glamour

Superstructure (public image), 2023 at Eastbourne ALIVE https://www.madeleinepledge.com/superstructure-public-image

Stretch, Flatlands Projects https://www.madeleinepledge.com/stretch

Isa Genzken’s jacket https://www.madeleinepledge.com/the-weather-garden

Sarah Shepherd - knitter of the balaclavas https://www.sarahshepherd.com/

Madeleine’s Pictures for Palestine print https://www.picturesforpalestine.com/photographs/madeleine-pledge

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Episode 11 of Pattern Portraits!

Lauren Godfrey chats with artist and filmmaker Michelle Williams Gamaker about costume as a nonverbal communicator in film, pattern stopping her in her tracks and the double echo of intergenerational clothes swapping.

Michelle is an artist known for her ambitious films that enact fictional revenge, placing marginalised voices at the centre of the narrative. Her epic film work ‘Theives’ was presented at South London Gallery in 2023, Dundee Contemporary Arts and Bluecoat in Liverpool in 2024. Michelle’s work responds to films watched during childhood, unpacked and seen anew over time, which raise important conversations about race, representation, identity and agency. Michelle’s work has won many awards including jointly winning the Jarman Award in 2020.

Pattern and colour are intrinsic in her world from costumes and sets to the clothes Michelle wears herself. A pair of her striped boots have even been immortalised in the work of another artist, Madeline Pledge who I am also interviewing this season!

Michelle has chosen some very special patterns, a polkadot and houndstooth from C&A passed down from her mum, a Kantha quilt kimono and Shalwar kameez adapted for wearing at her exhibition opening, a satin dress thrifted in Amsterdam and my personal favourite, an epic Paisley crossed with tiger print shirt by Pencaldi and B!

You can see all of Michelle's patterns and more on instagram @patternportraitspodcast

The PATTERN PORTRAIT print artwork to accompany Michelle’s interview and featuring the patterns we discuss is available to buy now at www.laurengodfrey.co.uk

https://www.instagram.com/m.williams.gamaker/

References:

Thief of Baghdad 1940 - produced by Alexander Korda and directed by Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger and Tim Whelan, with additional contributions by William Cameron Menzies and Korda brothers Vincent and Zoltán.

The Thief of Bagdad 1924 - directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Douglas Fairbanks.

Anna May Wong

Sabu

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Season 2 of PATTERN PORTRAITS! In this first episode of the new season, Lauren Godfrey chats with curator, writer and broadcaster, Amber Butchart about the power of souvenirs, the compulsory nature of leopard print and the joys of London Transport seating fabric!

You’ll probably know Amber from her very special TV series A Stitch In Time in which Amber explores the lives of historical figures through the clothes they wore, or perhaps for her regular appearances as the fashion historian on The Great British Sewing Bee! She is unmissable with impeccable dress sense and an iconic red bob, usually topped off with a colourful turban.

Amber has chosen patterns from many different sources, from 1960’s Anaglypta wallpaper, an Uzbek Ikat tunic bought in Istanbul, a leopard print carpet, a bespoke leopard print featuring her own silhouette by her partner Rob Flowers, a bedsheet from the Chinese Cultural revolution and a London Transport moquette from the London Country Buses.

Amber hosts her own podcast ‘Cloth Cultures’ for The British Textile Biennial which is a beautiful exploration of movement, migration and making through cloth. Her stunning exhibition ‘The Fabric of Democracy’ was at The Fashion and Textiles Museum in London earlier in 2024, exploring printed propaganda textiles over more than two centuries. It was a truly remarkable show really driving home the idea of pattern and fabric as codes and communicators - if ever we were in doubt about the power of pattern, this show dispelled it!

You can see all of Amber’s patterns and more on instagram @patternportraitspodcast

The PATTERN PORTRAIT print artwork to accompany Amber’s interview and featuring the patterns we discuss is available to buy now at www.laurengodfrey.co.uk

References / Links:

Bar américain at Zedel, London

Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood director of the Textile Research Centre in Leiden

Enid Marx- mentioned in relation to the London Transport Moquettes

Lauren Elkin article about textiles

Josef frank - Italian dinner

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 2 of Pattern Portraits is coming soon!

I’m Lauren Godfrey and each week I chat with fellow pattern lovers about a few of the patterns special to them.

Each guest picks a handful of their favourite patterns and these open up conversation about the their wider world of work and life and lead us down avenues of tartan and passageways of paisley with a little diversion in a floral forest!

Because it’s such a visual feast in an audible format, I’ve made prints to accompany each episode, a kind of undulating landscape of pattern on pattern, capturing the guests personality through the patterns they choose. You can buy the prints through my website, www.laurengodfrey.co.uk and this is a great way to support the podcast too if you’d like to hear more!

You can also follow @patternportraitspodcast on instagram to see the patterns we discuss and clips from the interviews.

This season is full of juicy nuggets of wisdom from some amazing pattern addicts, I hope you enjoy joining me on an odyssey of pattern as this season unfurls!

Season 2 of Pattern Portraits, coming soon!

With clips from interviews with Amber Butchart and Zoé Whitley, music by Alex Brenchley

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to this Bonus Episode of PATTERN PORTRAITS in collaboration with MIMA!

Lauren Godfrey chats with artist Jacqueline Poncelet on the occasion of her exhibition ‘In The Making’ at MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.

We chat about intelligent risk taking, the importance of travel for Jacqui and the visual beefy soup of the world around us!

Artist Jacqueline Poncelet graduated from an MA in ceramics from The Royal College of Art in 1972 and garnered a broad following in the international ceramics scene in the 70s and 80s, Jacqueline is an artist whose career spans 50 years and now explores ceramics, painting, sculpture and textiles as well as large scale public commissions. Her work varies from tiny and hand held to vast in scale, wrapping Edgware Road Underground station in a symphony of patterned vitreous enamel in 2012.

Pattern is at the crux of all she makes, whether it’s subtly impressed into bone china forms, spliced together in carpet swatches covering the floor, or woven into tactile blankets depicting the seasonal colour shifts of the hills of South Wales.

This episode of Pattern Portraits is in collaboration with MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art which is part of the School of Arts & Creative Industries at Teesside University. Jacqueline Poncelet’s solo exhibition ‘In The Making’ is on view there until 23rd June 2024. I highly recommend a visit, this stunning show envelops the breadth of Jacqueline’s practice over the past 50 years. Taking a thematic approach, it presents new reflections on work from different eras of Poncelet’s practice. This exhibition is her largest to date and is supported by Freelands Foundation and The Henry Moore Foundation. MIMA and Jacqui won the prestigious Freelands Award in 2021 which recognises the work of a midcareer woman artist who has not yet received the acclaim their work deserves.

I urge you to go and see the show and you will be rewarded with a feast of pattern!

Jacqui has chosen patterns across many forms, a painting - Edouard Vuillard, Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist, 1893, a ceramic platter by Janice Tchalenko, a Japanese Kimono acquired whilst in Tokyo and a Welsh coat.

You can see all these patterns and more on instagram @patternportraitspodcast

The PATTERN PORTRAIT print artwork to accompany Jacqui’s interview and featuring the patterns we discuss is available to buy now at www.laurengodfrey.co.uk and via the MIMA shop.

Season Two will be coming soon, follow @patternportraitspodcast to stay in the loop!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.