Student Stories: Sophie Devereux

Re-bonjour everyone, I’m Sophie, I’m French. A year ago I wrote a piece for the blog. That

was when I was just completing unit 3.2 of my BA(Hons) Textiles. A year later, and I am

compiling the final submission for Unit 3.3 (Major Project).

I won’t repeat that previous blog, you can read it here: OCASA Blog 2025 but instead I’d like to let you know about unit 3.3 and the value of getting out there and showing your work.

Leave your fears behind

Unit 3.3 emphasises ‘showing’ your work from all of stage 3 beyond OCA. Throughout my

BA(Hons) Textiles, OCA has helped to develop my communication skills through peer

discussions, reviews and tutorials of course, but unit 3.3 was a big new step. I was anxious about my work being, in some way, belittled by it all. I need not to have worried. Talking to my friends, they encouraged me to see ‘showing’ work as a conversation to develop my own thinking further rather than as a final act in which everything had to be perfect. This is great advice.     

One step at a time

I started with open calls. These forced me to reflect and select work. They help build confidence slowly but surely. Yes, sometimes you get rejected, but for each rejection there’s an ‘accepted’ email. Even the rejection helps – you ask yourself ‘why’? You then learn and move on, all the wiser. The work develops. I found choosing a mix of calls from small local galleries to big national calls helps generate a wide range of helpful ‘feedback.’ My work became more fine-tuned, more finished and better explained as a result.

Getting confident

From open calls I moved on to talk about my work to a local creative group. You then realise that people are so supportive and not at all dismissive; they are not judgmental, they pass on their experience, techniques and suggestions. All the time my confidence grows and my work responds.

Be experimental

My work is site-responsive, so I thought of taking it to the site that inspired it. I know it is not site-specific, but I can say with certainty now that putting it on site where the public could see it, and then photographing as a reflective exercise allowed me to see it in a completely different light. It really helped me to reflect on scale, and I was proud of the way my work literally made tangible the intangible qualities of the site through textile work. It even provoked me to make some of my work on site! Do let me know if you have any other novel ideas about how I might show work.

Talk with your tutor

Faye has been such a great help. It was in discussing the difference between site specific and site responsive work that I was persuaded not to be scared to take my ‘responsive’ work to site as a new means of reflecting and developing my ideas. Don’t always think a tutorial is about playing it safe and getting a big tick of success. I find those that provoke and make me think are by far the most useful.

And now

I’m rounding off unit 3.3 with two events that take ‘showing’ to a next level. I organised a

‘show and chat’ event at a local gallery. I curated a selection of my current work in progress alongside my process work to allow me to show it to visitors and discuss it. Not only did I get a lot of confidence, I found that talking to people is exciting and it shows that after my OCA journey I really do have an expertise. It’s amazing what this generates in terms of new ways of seeing my work.

Advice

And, to bring unit 3.3 to a close I will be showing my creative practice as a body of work in my local town hall. As someone who wants to go on to be a practising textile artist this is a great chance to have a go at it. Everything from room hire to insurance, and of course selecting and presenting the work must be covered. I love it. Showing my work (the intangible qualities of an estuary) beyond OCA and how I use textiles to explore and

communicate is giving me ideas, not just about technique but also about interpreting and developing it further.

My advice is simple – show your work, don’t be scared, go for it!

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Images

Reeds in progress on site: Sophie Devereux

Show and chat: Sophie Devereux

High Tide detail: Sophie Devereux