Poppy Nash is a professional artist whose work sits at the intersections of printmaking, textiles/digital textiles, archive and protest. Poppy creates simultaneously functional and decorative objects – agitprop clothes, luxuriant bedspreads, wall-hangings – which use that simultaneity to question and break down the barriers between domestic or private space. Text is incorporated into hand-printed fabrics, informed by Poppy’s interest in archive, undersung histories and community storytelling. Poppy seeks to reclaim craft as a legitimate and radical form of art-making: garments become protest placards, homeware objects symbols of dissent and empowerment. Drawing on a long history of female storytelling through textiles, Poppy explores the radical potential of craft to connect communities and artists.
Poppy has exhibited extensively across the UK and internationally, and delivered public commissions with organisations such as Tate, Shape Arts, Wellcome Collection and the National Disability Arts Collection & Archive. Public engagement is a central part of Poppy’s practice. Over the past several years she has run dozens of workshops, taught print techniques and garment construction, and created site-specific works for community-oriented projects, most recently with Hospital Rooms.
Poppy has wide-ranging experience in textile and paper printmaking. She was a print technician at Glasgow School of Art and print assist at Counter Editions, working on campaigns such as ICA 75th Anniversary and Greenpeace 50 Years. Recently, Poppy has provided in-studio print mentoring on a one-to-one basis for individual artists. Poppy has also delivered accessibility consultancy work for a number of organisations, including Diabetes Scotland. She is the recipient of residencies and fellowships from The Lighthouse, Cove Park and Documenta, among others.
In 2023, Poppy’s work was shown at the Material Manifestations of Loss exhibition, at the Cornell University Fashion and Textile Collection New York; as part of the Disability: Past and Present project at Devil’s Porridge Museum; and at the Ways of Knowing exhibition, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, an outdoor, site-specific commission placed in Brixworth Country Park. In 2024, Poppy completed an Arts Council England research project, where she investigated disobedient textiles: clothing, fabric and textile work that double as forms of protest. Poppy is currently developing this research into a new body of work.
Full Digital Portfolio and CV available on request.
poppymlnash@gmail.com