WOVEN: A Spotlight on Nicola Dellard-Lyle

06Oct10

We love WOVEN…

Recently, I was introduced to the photographic work of Nicola Dellard-Lyle by the ever-wonderful Kate Mercer, and was instantly sold on her beautiful WOVEN series. It won’t come as a surprise that Nicola has already achieved recognition in Wales, after exhibiting at force : vision, the second year BA (Hons) Photographic Art exhibition run by the University of Wales, Newport earlier this year. In her WOVEN series, Nicola explores the tactile and repeatedly contradictory relationship between body and cloth, where fabric holds a power over the way our bodies are perceived and represented. The engulfing and enveloping nature of cloth uncovers such paradoxes as a coexisting of revealing and concealing, protection and separation – where the covering of the body represents an uncovering and the line between a shield and a constriction is very thin. Nicola perceives the conflicting personality of cloth as something at once homely and uncanny, comfortable and uneasy; see two images from her WOVEN series [above]. Moving into her final year at the University of Wales, Newport, Nicola is clearly one photographer to watch; keep an eye out for her new blog too, currently under construction, but soon to be brimming with images from Nicola’s fantastic catalogue of work.