This December, NOW Gallery is pleased to present its 2024 Fashion Commission, Socks: The Art of Care and Repair, by London based textile artist Celia Pym. 

Focusing on the concept of sustainability in fashion and our lives more broadly, Socks: The Art Of Care And Repair will celebrate the everyday act of mending through darning. Central to the exhibition will be a vibrant, colourful installation of 488 socks, each stitched and darned by the Surrey Square Primary School community in Southwark using industry ‘warehouse’ waste socks. Children, staff and families of the school, learnt and practised their darning and stitching skills on socks, during a series of 26 workshops facilitated by Pym in early 2024.

In addition to the school’s mended socks, there will be a map of socks belonging to Pym’s friends and family – people she loves and cares for – mended visibly by Pym herself, in order to record patterns of wear and tear, and in styles that are designed to suit the respective sock-owners’ personalities. 

The idea behind Socks: The Art Of Care And Repair is to encourage a feeling of resilience, to be able to mend something; to play creatively with colour and yarn, and to foster a sense of care for ourselves, our clothes, the environment, and the people around us.

Pym’s commission will transform NOW Gallery into a creative workshop space, with mending materials and socks to inspire the community to learn the art of darning.  Visitors are encouraged to bring their own socks to the gallery to repair, and will be welcome to drop in and try their hand at darning, mending and stitching.  Celia Pym’s interactive videos and step-by-step guidelines will invite all to create a unique ‘visible mend’ to either take home or put on display in the gallery.  Throughout the exhibition run, visitors will also be able to book darning workshops at NOW Gallery facilitated by experts.

Celia Pym says, “It’s a small act of care to mend a hole in your sock or the sock of someone you love. It has a ripple effect. Caring for something or someone is expansive; it sets in motion something you can’t anticipate – a gift in return. Mending builds on what is left behind, it is an action that adds to the thing in front of you. It doesn’t erase damage but makes the story more interesting. A spot of bright colour, or a scar line, that indicates an act of care.  I’m so pleased to be able to bring this to NOW gallery and to share some skills for all to learn and take with them through life”

NOW Gallery and Greenwich Peninsula curator Kaia Charles says, “Celia Pym’s ‘Socks’ is a space for connectedness, respite and co-creation. Celia Pym has created a joyful inclusive exhibition exploring the art of repair. NOW Gallery is inviting everyone in our local community, in particular; schools and young people located in Greenwich Peninsula to get involved and get mending!  Sustainable fashion plays an important role across the Peninsula with resident designers like Helen Kirkum in the Design District ”

Pym has extensive experience with the spectrum and stories of damage, and has worked with garments that belong to individuals as well as items in museum archives. Her interests concern the evidence of damage, and how repair draws attention to the places where garments and cloth wear down and grow thin. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most recently in Bags, (2024) (solo) Hweg; Cheongju Craft Biennale, Korea (2023) ‘Connect. Reveal. Conceal’. Make Hauser & Wirth (2023) Threads Breathing stories into materials, Arnolfini (2023); Waste Age, The Design Museum (2021). In 2017 she was shortlisted for the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize and the inaugural Loewe Craft Prize.