Craft / Over Time – A retrospective exhibition by Nancy Tingey, Woolshed Gallery, Strathnairn Arts until August 11. Reviewed by MEREDITH HINCHLIFFE.

Nancy Tingey has worked in a variety of materials over her long career in the crafts and visual arts.

Tingey has an MA in Fine Art (UK) and in 1996 was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study art as a therapy for Parkinson’s, travelling to Europe, the UK, and North America.

In this retrospective exhibition, audiences are given little tasters of her work since 1963. We have the pleasure of being able to leaf through her diaries, workbooks, albums and journals since this time.

The earliest works on show are watercolour studies for stained glass from 1963, a watercolour Cows in Landscape from 1963, and oil painting titled Holme Village.

With three small children, Tingey and her husband went to Western Australia. Tingey had been shown how to piece fabrics together, using hand stitching, and she packed small pieces of fabric to begin making quilts. She pointed out to me that making stained glass works was quite similar to making quilts as you join pieces together, working with the colours. However, quilting is easier to travel with and safer with young kids around.

Tingey became adventurous in her quilt-making, for example, The Piece Process: Mantle, 1994. With a cut placket for the neck, Mantle sits on the shoulders, with pieces hanging from it rather like a fringe. Tingey always uses viyella, a warm wool and cotton mix for larger quilts. She is also showing a couple of quilts using discarded men’s silk ties. The hexagon shape allows her to explore colours, as she had done when working in glass.

Tingey sees two sides to her work, and her life. She returned to the UK in 2002 to embark on a Masters in Contemporary Applied Art (Textiles). Using a carding machine, she combined Merino wool and Herdwick wool to create an ethereal, gauze like felted length of fabric. Titled Back to the Fold (2004), this work hangs from the ceiling of the gallery and folds in loops on the floor. A length of thread, possibly Herdwick, joins the felt in the centre. This is a wonderful work, imbued with memories and meanings and reflects her double life.

Another work which represents her double life is Early Study, Mapping Hall and the Lake District (2002). Framed in timber with glass, one side has a circular centre, with radiating lines and the other is closely stitched.

To me, Tingey is always reinventing her life and her work. When her husband developed Parkinson’s at 46, she founded the Therapy for People With Parkinson’s program, combining her role as a community artist and art curator with her role as a carer.

This is an extensive exhibition, showing her skills in different techniques in the crafts and visual arts, and it is impossible to mention them all here.

We are fortunate indeed to have the opportunity to see Tingey’s work of the past 61 years – her most recent work is dated 2024.