A Few of My Favourite Things - Maria Walker

Prism member Maria Walker’s artwork won a prize in an exhibition in the summer and her prize was the opportunity to hold her own show in the gallery. In part one of her two-part blog Maria explains how this came about and shares her story.

Early this year I picked up a leaflet advertising an open call for a summer exhibition based in Surrey. The exhibition was to be held at The Horton Arts Centre in Epsom and had the theme ‘A State of Mind’ which immediately resonated with me as the Horton is a listed building and is the former chapel of Epsom’s historic psychiatric hospitals and the work I had in mind to submit was piece of textile art, an old hospital pillowcase onto which I had hand-embroidered one of my own poems. My poem recounts a dream I have  regularly where I go back in time and visit the house where I was born, a theme which I felt was relevant to the title.

My work was accepted, and the private view was arranged on the opening evening in August which I went along to. The weather was awful on that day, it was torrential rain. The traffic was bad, so I arrived late, just as the speeches and prizes has been announced. It was only after I had been asked for my name by one of the organisers that I was told that my work had won a prize.  I had won the opportunity to have my own exhibition in the Arts Centre sometime in 2025.

After the exhibition had ended, I was contacted by the curator to arrange a time to meet up to discuss my plans for my exhibition. She offered to visit me in my home studio to view my work, which was good as I do have a lot of work stored around my house. I had a couple of solo exhibitions in venues in the North of England several years ago on the theme of the past and memories so I have work which spans over 20 years, this would give me the opportunity of seeing how it would look together.

Over the next few days, I turned the downstairs of my house into an art gallery.  I have picture rails in my 1930’s house so I was able to hang my work easily from the walls. Mostly my current art practice is informed by my experience of being human and this allows me to make work on seemingly diverse topics. I tend to work with a limited colour palette which also creates a sense of cohesion in my practice. Luckily most of my art did work well together and it was easy to spot the one couple of pieces of work that I felt detracted from the emergent theme on the exhibition.

On the day of the visit as most of my work was installations, floor-based assemblages or textile hangings. My textile pictures and prints I had made for my earlier exhibitions had all been taken from their frames when I relocated to Surrey, and I had found no need to reframe the work. For the Summer Show everything had to be framed to be attached to the screens except for a few sculptures on plinths, so I was convinced that I would not be able to exhibit my existing work.

It turned out that I needn’t have worried for there was a lot of flexibility in the way the gallery could be arranged and how the work could be hung for a solo show. The curator seemed to love the diversity and tactility of my work and talked about it enthusiastically.

The experience of having just created a gallery in my house was a very useful experience as it allowed me to see new juxtapositions emerging from the random placement of the work and I could even imagine conversations taking place between the artworks. When the curator asked me how I envisaged the exhibition I immediately replied, “artists rooms”.

The curator thought this was a good idea as it would allow the visitors to enter my world of the past, everyday life, objects, memories and storytelling. The next decision was to come up with a title and a date. We settled on holding the exhibition in January as it could run for three weeks. Usually I come up with serious sounding exhibition titles such as “Past Lives” but I felt a title of this ilk would not tempt visitors to come and visit the exhibition so I was delighted when she suggested “These are a few of my Favourite Things”  I chose that as I felt it says it all.

It is the plan that my artwork informally hung in a series of rooms like an artist’s studio. Not much will be framed nor will there be white plinths but instead my props and furniture and books from the Chapel will be used to display the artwork. Some of the work on display will be work in progress again like an artist’s studio. There will also be some tactile handling samples, and I will be having a meet the artist event and running a couple of workshops which are related to the work in the exhibition. I might even make a few ‘brown paper packages tied up with string’ in true Sound of Music style!

More information… 

Maria’s Exhibition These are a few of my Favourite Things runs from the 4 to 23 January 2025 at The Horton Arts Centre, Haven Way, Epsom, KT19 8NP

Opening Times

Tuesday to Saturday 9.15am- 4.30pm

Meet the Artist Event – Saturday 11th Jan 1pm

Memory Book Workshop with Maria Walker
Friday 10th January, 10:15am -3:15pm
Create a unique and beautiful Memory Book to display a treasured personal item in this full-day workshop

Favourite Things: Hand-Stitching Workshop with Maria Walker
Saturday 18th January, 10:15am – 3:15pm
Create a unique and striking hand-stitched textile artwork from a simple line drawing in this full-day workshop. 

https://thehortonepsom.org/events/maria-walker-exhibition-these-are-a-few-of-my-favourite-things/