My Studio Newsletter Updates from My Practice
Hello Friends,
I’m excited to announce a new online course I will be running: “The Rest is Memory – Exploring Identity Through the Family Album.”This six-week workshop allows artists to dive into their personal histories, archives, and memories, using photography as a lens to explore who we are, who we were and where we come from.
Through reflective exercises, creative prompts, and personal guidance in a small, supportive group, participants will:
Discover threads in their family and personal histories that can become the foundation for their own artistic work
Engage with memory, materiality, place, and objects to expand the language of art
Build a plan for a project connecting personal story to artistic practice
This is not about technical skills; it’s about process, reflection, and storytelling.
Whether you’re looking to deepen your practice, uncover new directions, or reconnect with what drives your work, this course provides the space and guidance to do just that.
I have previously run the programme from my studio in South Africa.
Here’s what one participant shared after attending:
"After my first session with Pippa in January 2023, my heart was overflowing with gratitude and excitement. I wrote this: ‘My heart is open wide. My thoughts are bouncing along. I’m looking forward to more, more, more.’
Over time, with Pippa’s insightful, gentle guidance, I came to understand myself in the here and now, as a natural follow-through of my tribe, my ancestry
....
My understanding and acceptance of myself as an artist has flourished.”
Anyone interested to sign up, please email: pippa@pippahetherington.co.za
An art professor once told me, during a particularly challenging time: “Make a love letter - to yourself, or for someone else.” I took that advice to heart, and it has since become a cornerstone of my work. This year has been full of ups and downs - a sense of displacement, navigating new spatial places and landscapes, and reflecting on my personal heritage and my place in the world. So what did I do? I made love letters…not to myself, but to the landscape I was born into.
[siteorigin_widget class="SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget"] [/siteorigin_widget]
You can read more about this in an article published in Art Africa, written by Clare Patrick. Clare’s work often brings overlooked figures and histories into view. Read the article here: Grounds of Return: Pippa Hetherington’s Dialogues of Land and Memory.
This year, an earlier body of my work was part of the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) exhibition Soft Power: Lives Told Through Textile Art, a summer group show where I was honoured to exhibit Cuttings 1820–2020, a collaborative work with the Keiskamma Art Project (KAP) from 2020. You can read an interview with the RWA here: Spotlight: Pippa Hetherington and the Keiskamma Art Project.
Curated by Professor Alice Kettle and Professor Lesley Millar MBE, it was a privilege to exhibit alongside an exceptional group of contemporary textile artists, including: Anurita Chandola, Mona Craven, Rachel Fallon, Sarah-Joy Ford, Enam Gbewonyo, Shelly Goldsmith, Kani Kamil, Sabine Kaner, Alice Kettle, Reiko Koga, Phillipa Lawrence, Lise Bjorne Linnert, Susie MacMurray, Alice Maher, Suzumi Noda, Paula Reason, Erin M Riley, Lasmin Salmon, Amneh Shaikh-Farooqui, Ellen Sharples, Kari Steihaug, Maryam Wahid, Audrey Walker.
Lastly, keeping the fire going behind my documentary photography, I travelled to Morocco a few months ago, where I was able to engage with new landscapes and communities. During the trip, I contributed documentary material exploring themes of sustainability and human-environment interaction to African Pictures, an online stock library. This experience offered me invaluable insight into how these ideas resonate visually and conceptually. You can view the material here: African Pictures – Sustainability.
With warmth and curiosity, until next time
Pippa