Threads of Ascent: Tapestries by Clare Woods

Created from intimate scale watercolours depicting climbing weeds, the works transform moments of close observation into monumental woven landscapes, inviting a reconsideration of the plants that are so often overlooked or dismissed.

Each tapestry begins with a climbing plant encountered in a landscape marked by human intervention. Bindweed ascends a high-security fence on an industrial estate, its delicate white flowers threading through a structure designed to restrict movement and define ownership. A passion fruit vine spills over a chain-link fence and locked gate in downtown Los Angeles, softening a barrier intended to separate and secure. Common vetch engulfs an abandoned allotment, reclaiming a place once cultivated but now surrendered to time.

In each instance, the plants inhabit spaces of tension – between cultivation and neglect, access and exclusion, control and release.

This free exhibition coincides with the new display of the Garden Museum’s 17th century Mortlake tapestry, the earliest depiction of a woman gardening in the museum’s collection, celebrating 400 years of tapestry-making in the UK.