Ann-Marie Williamson's practice merges painting and textiles to create works that harness the emotive potential of fabric to explore themes of identity, motherhood, memory, trauma and healing.
A core exploration for Williamson is the concept that cloth, being intimately connected to the body, has the potential to evoke emotional responses through sensory cues such as scent, texture, and visual presence. Unlike traditional materials such as paint or clay, fabric carries a history. It can be worn, inhabited, and marked by the body. Over time, it records the presence of its wearer - softening, fading, gathering stains, and holding scent within its fibres.These subtle traces transform the material into a vessel for memory, capable of evoking deeply personal responses.
Williamson’s use of fabric is also a political and conceptual choice. While she predominantly works with textiles, she actively seeks to escape the marginalisation often associated with 'Textile Art’ or ‘Fibre Craft’. She aims to reclaim the narrative of textile as a medium and challenge the gendered histories that limit its meaning. In doing so, she asserts the significance of textile practices within contemporary art, championing their ability to hold and communicate complex, deeply human stories.
The works are semi-autobiographical, with each painting symbolising a collection of experiences, a memory or a specific period in time. Damaged surfaces are repaired through acts of care, such as patching or darning. Embroidery becomes a tool for healing, forming fabric "scabs" to protect unseen wounds beneath, while especially painful recollections are evoked through dense layers of paper and paint; a gesture toward repression, forgetting, or transformation.
The compositions emerge intuitively - layered, disrupted, repaired. As a result of this process, the works often exhibit characteristics of incompleteness, prompting contemplation on the concept of preservation - how to retain memories, repair what's broken, and ultimately ask: how far can something be salvaged before it becomes transformed beyond recognition?
EXHIBITIONS
September 2025 | Linklaters Award Show | Group Exhibition, Between People Gallery, London
September 2025 | Level Crossing, | Group Exhibition, Roydon, Essex
September 2025 | MAFA Postgrad Show | University of East London, Docklands, London
April 2025 | Chicken Soup | Group Exhibition, Farsight Gallery, Soho, London
February 2025 | Process | Online group exhbition with Partnership Editions
September 2024 | MA Fine Art Show | Group exhibition, University of East London Docklands campus
June 2024 | Non-Bio | Group Exhibition, The Old Lightwell Gallery, Docklands, London
May 2024 | London Craft Week | Cluster Crafts, Vestry Street, Shoreditch, London
May 2024 | Both Sides Now | Group exhibition, Way Out East Gallery, Docklands, London
April 2024 | Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore | Site Specific group exhibition, 83 Goldsmiths Row, Hackney, London
January 2024 | IN/OUT | Group Exhbition, Hive Curates, Stratford, London
November 2023 | Stirrings Stills | Group Exhibition, Peckham Safehouse 2, London
AWARDS
2025 MAFA Linklaters Award - Shortlisted
2024 Partnership Editions Open Call - Winner
2024 New Blood Art Emerging Art Prize 2024 - Nominee
2023 MA Scholarship award, University of East London
Artist Portfolio and CV available upon request