weaver

Cloth can hold conversations that words cannot.

In weaver, artist Shelly Goldsmith returns to relationships that continue to evolve across time. Ancient weaving traditions are brought  into dialogue with contemporary textile technologies and photography, where making itself becomes a form of thinking and a way to embrace conversation as an ongoing practice.

At the heart of the exhibition is Princess Pyramid. A family photograph from the late 1960s is enlarged to 2.5 by 3 metres and printed onto recycled cloth, allowing the image to take on a material language sympathetic to the hand-woven tapestry that intervenes on it. Mother and daughter remain visible while the other female figures disappear beneath the heavy weave. The tapestry conceals, protects and reveals in equal measure, holding open a conversation that cannot be concluded.

Alongside Princess Pyramid, weaver brings together smaller textile works and drawings on paper that expand on the ideas explored in the installation, offering further insight into Goldsmith's process and the conversations that unfold through making.

When Goldsmith was in her early twenties, her parents and only sibling emigrated to the United States, this experience of separation became a catalyst for an ongoing exploration of memory, distance and the evolving relationship between mother and daughter, to which weaver returns decades later.

Rather than treating the past as something fixed or complete, Goldsmith's work embraces conversation as an ongoing practice, one that invites viewers to consider what making can hold when words alone are no longer enough. 

- A limited-edition tote bag accompanies the exhibition and will be available to purchase exclusively in the gallery. A cloth kit version will be available on the website shop starting 10th September while supplies last.

Thursday 17th to Tuesday 22nd September 2026

Opening times Thursday to Monday: 11:00 to 17:00

Tuesday 22nd September: 11:00 to 14:00

Projects Kavel Rafferty

22-23 Cecil Square 

Margate, CT9 1BA

Meetings with Shelly Goldsmith are available at the gallery by prior arrangement.

For more information, interviews and images, contact: info@shellygoldsmith.com