IMMA Dublin: Fascinating patchwork of social history behind American quilts exhibition
Raina Lampkins-Fielder, curator of the Gee's Bend exhibition at IMMA. Picture: Alice Thomson
Louisiana P Bendolph and Rita Mae Pettway may not be household names, but their extraordinary quilts have been exhibited in museums all over the world, and are now having their first showing in Ireland at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham, Dublin.
The exhibition, Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, is jointly organised by IMMA and Souls Grown Deep, a non-profit established to preserve, document and promote the artistic legacies of black American artists based in the Southern United States. Many of the organisation’s activities centre on the quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend, a small farming community in rural Alabama.
