Same Sea, Different Boat exhibition opens at Salisbury Arts Centre

The first exhibition of 2022 at Salisbury Arts Centre opens tomorrow (11th January 2022), showcasing a textile art display called Same Sea, Different Boat.

This socially engaged project with an international outreach. The exhibition further includes the works of the project’s four founding artists Sue Brown, Liske Johnson, Louise Asher, and Catherine Kingzett.

Same Sea, Different Boat is a quilt with a difference, the creation of which joins together three artists’ studios to inspire and connect creative people in order to produce this artwork which is now on its UK tour. To date, over 500 artists from UK and abroad contributed to this project.

The project was instigated by artist Sue Brown in collaboration with artists Liske Johnson, Louise Asher, and Catherine Kingzett. The resulting quilt is an uplifting artwork; a combination of craftivism and social documentary. The piece consists of hundreds of hand-printed and stitched stories lovingly produced by individual artists from across the UK and abroad. Each participant in this piece reacts to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This positive, warm, and moving textile installation is currently touring the UK and will grow as it travels around the country. You can see the display at Salisbury Arts Centre from the 11th January – 5th March 2022.

The mission of this artwork is to collect stories, share experiences to make people laugh or cry whilst reflecting on the unknown world we now live in.

Sue Brown, the project founder commented, “The quilt is a metaphor for how the effects of the quarantine have isolated us, yet we have all been part of it. Making the piece open ended also illustrates that Covid-19 will continue to shape our lives - everyone has their own isolation story, and we will help tell it”.

The exhibition was originally intended to visit Salisbury Arts Centre last Winter but was cancelled due to the third lockdown. Instead, Wiltshire Creative at the time produced a video about Same Sea, Different Boat project. In this video the project’s lead artist Sue Brown teaches the technique of making a collagraph plate and describes the technique of intaglio print, and explains how to take part in the growing project which focuses on our shared experience of the Covid world we now live in. This video, together with a video produced by Youth Theatre members responding to the artwork through puppetry, is also shown as part of the exhibition.

Resident Artist Mirka Golden-Hann said, “I am very pleased to be able finally to exhibit this artwork in Salisbury. We all have different Covid experiences, and this artwork gives an insight into how creativity is one of our main coping strategies when we face significant and life-altering events.”