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Emily Cannell

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Emily Cannell is a Suffolk-based artist working with textile sculpture, photography, moving image and installation. Her practice centres on transformation and re-purposing: she drapes, covers and wraps materials — including ex-military parachutes and recycled jersey — to create site-specific sculptures and installations, which she then documents in photographs and film.

She holds an MA Fashion from Norwich University of the Arts (2019) and a BA (Hons) Fine Art from Middlesex University (2012). Solo exhibitions include TILT at The Old Theatre, Framlingham (2023) and On the Brink at Outpost Gallery, Norwich (2022). Recent group shows include In Proximity at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery (2026), Noon to Moon at First Light Festival, Lowestoft (2025) and Thread Count Part One at The Art Station, Saxmundham (2024). She was awarded an Arts Council England DYCP grant and a Firstsite Collectors' Group Bursary in 2025. Her work is held in the Norwich University of the Arts collection.

Artist Statement

"My practice centers on transformation and re-purposing; using recycled and new textiles with sculptural properties to re-imagine places and objects, documenting the work in photographs and moving image. I have a bank of materials which metamorphose and circulate through my work; inhabiting changing environments and becoming new forms."

"I'm compelled to challenge traditional methods of making by resisting cutting into materials wherever possible; instead, I drape, cover, and wrap to create site-specific sculptures and installations."

Work

  • TILT, 2023. A large-scale textile and mixed-media installation at The Old Theatre in Framlingham, repurposing a 75-foot ex-military parachute (with chairs, wooden posts, sandbags, car bumpers and metallic fabrics) into a monumental, immersive shelter that audiences could enter and explore.
  • London Rd South, 2026. Red satin spills from a fireplace across a patterned carpet in a pink-walled room — part of Cannell's installation transforming the furniture and interiors of a house in Lowestoft with draped red textiles.
  • Silver-grey satin draped over a fragment of crumbling concrete coastal defense, grasses bursting through. From Cannell's ongoing body of work covering decommissioned military bunkers and pill boxes along the East Anglian coast.
  • Installation view: a moving-image work shown behind an open steel vault door, depicting fabric covering a concrete coastal defense — Cannell's photography and video documentation of sculptural interventions at former military sites.