Julia Griffiths Jones

Room Within a Room

I am inspired and influenced by textiles created by women alongside their domestic duties. This interest began when I was a student at the Royal College of Art. In 1977 I won a scholarship to research and draw textiles in Poland and Slovakia. Here I saw Folk Art for the first time; it was woven through all aspects of life. Gradually I began to transfer my drawings into three dimensions using wire and became totally enthralled by the possibilities of drawing in space using line and colour. In 2016 I made Room within a Room, a fifteen square metre installation of suspended objects. It was a material translation of drawings into welded steel wire forms which were suspended in layers. I wanted the viewer to see a complete domestic space, interspersed with clothing and furniture which create a linear shadow scape. In 2017 I won the Gold Medal for Craft and Design at the National Eisteddfod of Wales in Anglesey for this piece, and the Josef Herman People's Prize for the same work.