SEE / AND KNOW / BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION – Poppy Nash

SEE / AND KNOW / BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION is one of a stream of imperious commands and statements issued in a set of textile scrolls, stitched by Lorina Bulwer (1838–1912) while interned within a Norfolk workhouse.

Glasgow-based artist Poppy Nash enlarges phrases from Bulwer’s testimony and stitches them into fragments of repurposed fabric. To produce these textile works, Nash layers and scrunches carefully constructed composites of cloth scraps into a digital embroidery machine. She mirrors and mediates this process through screenprinting on paper, building up textures and motifs on the matrix like patches stitched onto cloth. To create her prints, Nash places fabric directly onto the screen; these burnt fragments are then reused within the stitched works, forming an interpolation of print and textile. In doing so, Nash stages a dialogue between the embroidered and the printed word, encouraging us to consider the neglect of the former in favour of the latter in dominant modes of history-telling. Nash’s approach to printmaking is deeply embedded in Feminist agitprop and the use of printed matter by activist movements. In reconstituting Bulwer’s embroidered words as print and translating them into banner-like compositions, Nash compels us to view them as materialisations of a subversive voice: tactile history from below.

Nash’s interest in entangling the mechanics of printmaking with the pliancy of textiles is shared by her friend and mentor Fraser Taylor, an interdisciplinary artist also based in Glasgow. Taylor’s longstanding interest in the co-constitutive relationship between graphic design, printmaking techniques, and the materiality of textiles has led him to incorporate garment construction, graphic design, and performance into his artistic practice. Screen-printing has been a significant part of Taylor’s technical arsenal since the late 1970s, allowing him to translate the immediacy and specificity of a hand-drawn mark into a replicable unit of form. Unlikely Architectures features printed textiles alongside thick, gestural oil marks layered onto collaged cardboard, produced between 2020 and 2025. The shapes that comprise the visual skeleton of both printed and painted works are taken from Taylor’s observational drawings of architectural details, abstracted into elemental structures. Through a stark, monochromatic palette, fragmented curves and grids invoke the shadows of an arch or gable; the curve of a tunnel; the mullion of a window. Together, the works conjure an imagined topography, or the disjointed glimpses of an unfamiliar city seen by night.

Both Nash and Fraser Taylor’s artistic practices mobilise collaboration across disciplines to make work embedded in life outside of the studio or gallery space. Taylor has worked closely with musicians, producers and fashion designers, lending his visual language to album covers, theatre sets, and wearable textiles; Nash collaborates with charities, archive holdings and community centres to create site-specific, accessible artworks. The two artists have materialised the intersections between their practices by producing a set of nine collaborative works, displayed on street poster sites around Edinburgh and Glasgow during their parallel exhibitions at Patriothall.

With support from the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.

Skin, cloth, needles, text, ink, printing, stitching, folding: these elemental materials and actions form the bedrock of Poppy Nash’s artistic practice. Poppy activates the potential of textile and tactile materiality to mitigate oppressive circumstances; whether through research-based projects that look back to historical subversive craft practices, or in the implementation of her work to enrich and soften environments that provide public care. She has collaborated with the Wellcome Collection, the National Disability Arts Collection & Archive, Hospital Rooms and Tate Modern, conducting archival research, creating commissioned works, and holding public talks and workshops. Her permanent artworks include The Welcome Room at Sandwell CAMHS; a public art intervention at the Boghall Community Centre; and Disability Rights! Are Human Rights!, for the NDACA. Solo presentations include Glasshouse, Gathering (2025); Walpole Bay Hotel (2022); Review Gallery (2019), and Patriot Hall (upcoming). Poppy’s work has been included in group exhibitions at Cornell University in New York, Hauser and Wirth in London, Site Gallery in Sheffield, and The Grundy, Blackpool, among others. Poppy lives and works in Glasgow.