17.09.2026 – 19.09.2026

Kaela Galliford:

The Works

The Works presents sculptures by recent Loughborough University Fine Art graduate Kaela Galliford, following her selection for the Modern Painters, New Decorators Graduate Award at the 2026 Degree Show. Working predominantly with handmade felt, Galliford explores women’s labour through architecture, language and her own maternal family history.

---

Galliford’s large-scale felt sculptures borrow the forms and patterns of wrought-iron fences and architectural structures. Built by hand from wool, water and soap, they turn solid forms into something bodily and irregular. At the centre of Galliford’s work is the story of her great-grandmother, Lily. During the Second World War, Lily served as a W.R.E.N., where her work included cleaning fighter jets. She later worked as a secretary skilled in shorthand, while also being an accomplished seamstress. Galliford connects these different forms of women’s work—industrial, administrative and domestic—through the materials and processes of her sculptures.

Language also runs through the work. Lily’s name written in shorthand closely resembles the shorthand symbol for ‘labour’, while Galliford draws a connection between the word ‘wrought’—meaning worked or laboured—and the ironwork her sculptures reference. Felt becomes a way of bringing these histories together: wool is worked repeatedly by hand into forms that resemble iron, allowing softness and strength, bodily effort and architectural structure to occupy the same space.

---

Kaela Galliford is a Welsh artist whose work explores feminist history, women’s labour and maternal lineage. Working primarily through wet felting, she creates sculptural forms that draw connections between the physical processes of textile-making and histories of women’s domestic, industrial and administrative work. Galliford graduated from BA Fine Art at Loughborough University in 2026, where she was selected for the Modern Painters, New Decorators Graduate Award. Modern Painters, New Decorators’ Graduate Award supports an artist graduating from Loughborough University’s BA Fine Art programme to present work beyond the context of their degree show. Galliford was selected from the 2026 Degree Show and will present her work in MPND’s Project Space for three days in September.