Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1955 London, England

Other name/s: Margaret Scott

Biography

Textile artist Maggie Scott was born in London, England in 1955. Her parents emigrated from the Caribbean to England the previous year: her mother was from St Vincent, and her father, although living in St Vincent, was born in Trinidad. Scott spent her childhood in Notting Hill, a neighborhood with a significant British Caribbean community, amid an atmosphere of prejudice and discrimination. Growing up in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s, the expectations for her future were heavily influenced by the times. She was aware that she could become a nurse, an athlete, or a singer, but becoming an artist or designer never arose in discussions. Scott acknowledged that her upbringing in the UK, living within a white majority culture, and experiencing institutionalised racism, postponed her acceptance of the title 'artist', as she struggled for years to believe she was sufficiently skilled to be a professional artist (Textile Artist interview). During the 1980s and 90s, she actively participated in various groups and movements advocating for the rights of women, especially black women, and was deeply involved in liberation politics. On graduating in Fashion Textiles from St. Martin's School of Art in 1976, Scott joined the John Ashpool company in Assisi, Italy where she designed knitwear for high-end boutiques; Ashpool was the 'biggest influence' in her work (Textile Artist interview). After four years honing her craft while moving between Italy and France, she established her first studio in London in 1980. Scott gained recognition for her sumptuously crafted felt textiles designed to be worn, as she explored transparency and basic geometric shapes, while adding colour and texture by layering fine wool fabric onto printed silk chiffon.

As part of the national crafts initiative The Shape of Things, Scott presented her solo autobiographical exhibition, Negotiations – Black in a White Majority Culture, at Leicester Museum & Art Gallery in 2012. An Arts Council bursary allowed her to 'delve deeper into the extensive multicultural, multiethnic implications of my own and other family histories […] I aim for my work to contribute to and reflect on the question of national identity in the 21st century' (The Shape of Things 2019, p. 23), marking a pivotal transition from her career in fashion to fine art. Scott produced vividly colored and richly textured pieces by printing photographs onto large silk chiffon sheets and then employing a technique called nuno-felting, which involved pushing fibres through silk, to soften the image. Negotiations examined the complexities and contradictions of Black British identity through large-scale textile and installation works, aiming to prompt a dialogue about British identity and representation. Her textile pieces employed double-aspect images, juxtaposing personal memories with historical events to reveal hidden continuities and connections in British lives, exemplified by two large-scale textiles narrating distinct, yet intertwined, stories. Wedding Day depicted a photograph of her mother's second wedding to Scott's stepfather, capturing the enthusiastic young couple and Scott as a child. Next to this work, a textile featured a photograph taken the same year, in 1958, less than five miles away, portraying a massive racist rally in Trafalgar Square called Keep Britain White, organised jointly by the White Defence League and the National Labour Party. In the textile-collage series, Early Messages, Scott used a joyful photograph of herself as a child at the beach as a recurring theme, contrasting it with several contemporary cultural references, such as Enid Blyton's infamous book The Three Golliwogs and television’s popular ‘Black and White Minstrel Show’. Reflecting on childhood memories, Scott noted that although she did not have a political consciousness at five, she was ‘fed’ with these ‘bewildering’ images, which had deep and enduring effects on her and the black community.

Scott's pieces also showcased the aesthetic and symbolic possibilities inherent in the painstaking process of felting. Commonly perceived as 'women's work', felt transformed into a medium for interwoven stories and collective experiences under her touch. In her series No One Came Here to Hide, she incorporated photographs – frequently self-portraits – printed on silk chiffon and integrated into felt. Although her initial objective was to capture specific expressions, the layering technique provided an opportunity to investigate tense and potential contrasting narratives, such as escaping or concealing, opening up or shutting down, and being an object or a subject. Scott’s project, Five Times More, included in The Knitting & Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace, London in 2022, was initiated after learning from Radio 4's Woman's Hour that black women are five times more likely to die during childbirth than white women. Humanising these statistics, these poignant works celebrate the bond between mother and child, contemplating both individual and shared experiences related to pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. Currently, Scott is delving into the potential of integrating film and video into her work, effectively making the moving image an essential component of the textile itself. Maggie Scott lives and works in Hastings. Her work is represented in the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery.

Related organisations

Arts Council England (Bursary recipient)
St. Martin’s School of Art (student)
UK Friends of Healing Focus (co-founded the charity)

Selected exhibitions

Playing the Race Card, Greenhalf Studio, St Leonards (2022)
5 Times More, The Knitting & Stitching Show, Alexandra Palace, London (2022)
The Shape of Things, Flow Gallery, London (2019)
Negotiations, Black in a White Majority Culture: New Textiles by Maggie Scott, Leicester Museum & Art Gallery (2012)
The Shape of Things, Flow Gallery, London; Crafts Study Centre, Farnham (2010-11)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Maggie Scott ]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Maggie Scott artist