Richard McVetis

collectible objects

About

Richard is an artist and maker. His practice is deeply rooted in process, and intrinsic to this is hand embroidery. He records time and space through multiples of dots, lines, and crosses. These meticulously rendered stitches reflect a preoccupation with the repetitive nature of process. McVetis explores the subtle differences that emerge through ritualistic and habitual making.

As one of the UK’s leading artists working in embroidery, Richard has transformed the understanding and appreciation of a previously undervalued medium. Richard is a graduate of the Royal College of Art and a finalist for the Loewe Craft Prize.

“I'm interested in how process, specifically stitch, can reveal a world seen from within and from a scale that can tell us much more about ourselves, about our own trajectories in space.”

Richard McVetis

Process

The inscribed stitches mark the hand’s rhythms, a delicate performance of obsessive intricacy, refinement, and gesture. They record human presence, time and decay, each stitch or line acting as a marker for lived time, an embodiment of thought and patience. These physical, tactile, and repetitive modes of creation allow him the time to see and think, to occupy a space.

His works have the premise of being created during a predetermined or durational period; this lends the work a performance quality, although executed in private. However, these enforced restrictions of time and location mean that the work is subject to chance; in this way, he is but one of the contributing variables.

Services

  • workshops
  • commissions

Awards

  • Winner of Newby Trust Award at Cockpit 2019

Maker stories