Needle Sharp: Q&A with Lucy Fisher & Polly Mortimer

Last week, our trust launched its latest art exhibition, Needle Sharp: Thread Works in Wool and Cotton, by sisters Lucy Fisher and Polly Mortimer.

Fisher began her artistic journey at art school in the 1960s at the age of 17, though she eventually dropped out. Despite initial doubts about the value of her education, she learned to seek out abstract patterns and appreciate contrasts in shades and colours. The daily bus rides through South London profoundly influenced her artistic sensibilities.

In the mid-1970s, Fisher studied Medieval Art History at university. Her career primarily involved work as a sub-editor and writer for various magazines, including PC Magazine, Time, and The Week. Reviewing art shows for Time, she discovered that her background in creating art provided deeper insights than her formal education in art history. As photography became more accessible, she began capturing images of the city she had called home since her teenage years.

Around 25 years ago, Fisher resumed drawing, painting, and sewing, working with stranded cotton on canvas. Her tapestries and paintings, inspired by her photographs and drawings of urban scenes, reflect her diverse influences, which include Walter Sickert, Edward Hopper, pulp fiction book covers, Film Noir, and her early experiences travelling through South London.

Mortimer’s journey with tapestry began at age five with small kits and she has continued making them ever since. She has worked through Ehrman kits, medieval tiles and village greens, all of which she found “ferociously therapeutic. In the 1980s, she and her husband, Jeremy Mortimer, created a Tintin tapestry featuring the Thompson Twins.

In the 1990s, Mortimer continued to create and design abstracts inspired by the Macmillan Field Guide to Geological Structures. This included making cushion covers designed by her mother – with references to Sonia Delaunay pieces and indigenous aboriginal designs.  

Her later works included industrial and abstract subjects, such as pylons, Soviet bus stops, and geological formations. Mortimer refined her skills to create smaller pieces, drawing inspiration from mosaics, starbursts, and even tube train vents. She describes wool as being both challenging and rewarding and compares tapestries to mosaics. Mortimer’s work often subverts traditional perceptions of tapestry, focusing on industrial and personal themes.

When not crafting, Mortimer is the library manager at the British Psychotherapy Foundation and previously served as the librarian at the Minster Centre for 14 years.

How did your art journey begin?

Polly: I started doing it with little kits when I was 5. My mum was an artist, and she was very supportive. I spent quite a lot of my twenties in psychiatric ‘care’, in inverted commas. I found knitting a really good thing to do there because it was easy and portable. They allowed me to do it, but maybe they wouldn’t now because of needles and things. It was very therapeutic.

Then I had kids and was busy for 10 years, but I did find time to start doing some abstract tapestry to see if it worked. I used to read the children the Macmillan Field Guide to Geological Structures and would look at the pictures of these gorgeous geological constructions. I tried to do abstracts of those, and from there I just carried on.

Lucy: I went to an art school when I was 17, but had a miserable time. I dropped out, like many other people. After that, I didn’t think of myself as an artist for quite a long time. I just did an odd picture.

Some 30 years ago, I started taking photographs. Polly was already doing her geological structures. Privately, I was experimenting with painting and drawing, and I thought, why not do this as a tapestry? So, I did some, and I put them away. Polly discovered them and said, ‘these are lovely, you absolutely need to do more’. So, I did, and when I retired, I had more time, and it went on from there.

Polly, you noted the therapeutic side of your art practice.

Polly: Yes, I have found craft to be very therapeutic. Knitting, basic weaving, making rugs… There’s something about its repetitiveness, the sort of sameness of it.

I find some works of mine very cathartic to do, like the asylums that I was actually in. Some of them are no longer there. It sort of ratifies the fact that what happened to me there wasn’t great.

What I’m trying to do is to take craft away from being shoved into the craft box; to bring it out and show that you can actually do anything with craft equal to what people do with art. And that it is art. Because it always comes second to painting and printmaking.

You have exhibited here a couple of times before. How did your relationship with the Tavistock come about?

Polly: I’ve always heard of the Tavi. One of my friends, a social worker, has done a course here. I know people who’ve been here for counselling, and I used to come to the library when I was working at the Minster Centre. I then went on to work at the British Psychotherapy Foundation. So, psychotherapy is in my DNA now. You do fantastic things here.

Tell me more about your series of Soviet bus stops, which was inspired by a photo book of the same name by Christopher Herwig.

Polly: I was given that book by my daughter-in-law for Christmas. Herwig went around the former USSR, photographing and cataloguing lots of stuff. I found those industrial-looking bus stops, as well as the settings, just fascinating. They’re in extraordinary landscapes of Kazakhstan, or in the middle of Moldova – places I just won’t visit. I was really inspired to do them, and I think they came out really well. Herwig’s latest book is about Russian dachas, and I’m quite tempted to do those.

What does your creative process look like?

Lucy: The images come from walking in the streets with a camera. It used to cost a lot – now it’s easier and cheaper. And there’s Flickr and Facebook. Whatever it is that you’d like to take a picture of, there’ll be other people doing the same. It’s a little underground movement, I think.

I’ve done quite a lot of watercolours since I picked it up again. I’ve also done some oils and pastels. This year is going to be when I do an oil painting. I did that for about 6 months and I came to a stop, but I’ll pick it up again.

What was the process of selecting works for this exhibition?

Polly: They’re all my works – I don’t have any others. It takes a long time – the big piece took me a year. I can only do it while watching telly. Can’t do it when watching the Scandi noir, though, because of subtitles. So, I do it when watching dramas which don’t have subtitles. I might listen to a radio programme, but it does take a long time to come up with a concept and be happy with it. I’m very fussy about the colours and that sort of thing.

Lucy: I brought almost everything I had. I also feel they tell the same story.

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Needle Sharp: Thread Works in Wool and Cotton is being exhibited at the Tavistock Centre between 2 – 29 August (Monday – Friday 8am – 8pm)

Lucy Fisher’s instagram: @LucyRichmondFisher

Polly Mortimer’s Instagram pages: @IntervalThinks & @SubvertTheGerbera