Tristan Hoare Gallery is delighted to present Ascendance, Sussy Cazalet’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.
Ascendance brings together fourteen handwoven tapestries that sit at the intersection of tradition and contemporary abstraction. Working with flat-loom weaving, natural fibres, and organic, hand-mixed dyes, Cazalet paints in fibre—harnessing the medium’s physicality and expressive potential to create a distinctive language of form and feeling, line and texture.
With a background in design and architecture, Cazalet approaches her practice through a methodical system. At its core is a search for balance: between control and spontaneity, logic and emotion, structure and instinct.
Her process begins with watercolour and pigment on paper, where complex ideas are distilled into simplified colour and form. These studies are then magnified and translated into warp and weft, gaining depth through shade, texture, and scale. The resulting tapestries become expansive compositions—maps of an inner landscape shaped by intuition and imagination.
Cazalet draws constant inspiration from her close connection to the natural world. The cyclical movement of sun and moon, the shifting forces of wind and waves, are expressed through interacting geometric forms. Colour acts as a unifying force, flowing through the works to create a sense of heat, density, and momentum. Vast landscapes emerge—at once familiar and newly perceived.
Ascendance speaks to a gradual rising: a movement away from stillness and darkness, in which disparate elements are combined, transmuted, and drawn towards something greater.
The exhibition will include a selection of Cazalet’s hand-painted watercolour studies, alongside a group of mid-century furniture curated by Fiona Scarry, a reflection of Cazalet's interest in mid-century design and the influence it has on her work.
