Rachel Hutchinson is a textile artist from Northern Ireland, based in Carrickfergus, County Antrim. Following a First Class Honours degree in Textile Art from the University of Huddersfield in 2003, she worked in product development for a leading homewares company in Manchester before establishing herself as a freelance artist and educator in Belfast in 2006.

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Working primarily through hand embroidery and mixed media textiles, Rachel's practice centres on layering, repetition and the accumulation of stitched mark-making. After an earlier career producing public and private commissions, exhibiting throughout the UK and Ireland, and receiving a number of awards for her work, her practice re-emerged in 2024 following a decade-long hiatus from the arts.

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Embroidery became a means of returning to making through tactility, restraint and sustained attention. Working primarily with black thread on unbleached cloth, Rachel employs a deliberately restricted palette to focus attention on surface, tension and texture. Dense fields of hand stitching distort the fabric itself, creating spaces of pressure, resistance and release, while reflecting her longstanding fascination with layering and the construction of complex surfaces.

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Text fragments frequently appear within the work, often obscured, interrupted or partially excavated through stitch. Through these processes, Rachel explores themes of self-reflection, identity, memory, communication and perception. Her work considers sensory experience, masking and the ways in which language and perception shape our relationship with visibility, communication, connection and belonging. Recent pieces examine the weight and permanence of words and the emotional residue they leave behind.

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Throughout her career, Rachel has completed numerous public and private commissions, including recycled furniture for Queen's Film Theatre, Continuum for the Ulster Hospital Maternity Unit, and Fragment for Windsor Women's Centre, funded by Arts & Business and Stratagem.

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She lives in County Antrim with her husband, son and three rescue dogs.