Intaglio Printmaker Prize Winner: Jo Okell

Please could you tell us a bit more about the inspiration behind the work? 

I was looking through a British Museum Book on African Textiles that brought me to the role of the patch. In the 19th century, Sudanese armies of the Mahdist state signalled contempt for worldly goods by deliberately wearing ragged patched tunics. These weren’t patched out of necessity or poverty – some how they looked deliberately ugly. A far cry from the aesthetic of the poor patchwork quilters of early America or the Japanese Boro technique of delicately sewing/patching indigo dyed rags or tattered clothes into worn fabric to make much needed blankets which are now regarded as works of art.

I’ve always been interested in material, both in making and mending. I remember my aunt, needle and thread in hand, going through her weekly wash and sewing on missing buttons, darning holes in socks and patching any torn clothes. All this before ironing. She was quick and confident and produced in me a lasting admiration for such skill. Years later, a French convent was closing down and were selling off their long white muslin net curtains. Those that had been darned were quarter of the price. To me the mended ones with their exquisite tiny woven patches were worth more than those that had remained fully intact.