Celia Pym is an artist living and working in London. She has been exploring damage and repair in textiles since 2007. With extensive experience of repairing small everyday holes to more dramatic damage. Her interests are around the evidence of damage – and how repair forces a closer look at where garments and cloth have got worn down and thin. In clothing this wearing is often to do with use and how the body moves. She explores the difficulties of mending other people’s clothes; mending as detective work; materials for mending; and making damage visible. All mending is made using a sharp needle, scissors and yarn.

Her work has been exhibited internationally most recently in On Happiness: Tranquility and Joy, Wellcome Collection, London (2021), Siblings, Trading Museum, Paris (2020), Sewing Box for the Future, V&A Dundee (2020-21), Material Matters, Textilmuseum, St Gallen (2020), Don’t Feed the Monster! Galleri F15, Moss, Norway (2019) and Kind Things, Curator’s Cube, Tokyo (2019).

In 2017 she was shortlisted for the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize and the inaugural Loewe Craft Prize. Pym is a visiting lecturer in mixed media textiles at the Royal College of Art, London.

photo by El Brown