Gözde İlkin’s Site-Specific Installation Opens at Tate St Ives

On 2 October 2026, Tate St Ives opened Those Who Remember Their Births, a new site-specific commission by Turkish artist Gözde İlkin. The exhibition runs until 17 January 2027 and was developed during two residencies in St Ives earlier in 2026.

The installation brings together sculpture, painting, and embroidery to explore the relationships between the local landscape, memory, and women’s lived experiences. İlkin was inspired by the coastline, which she regards as a living archive shaped by waves, wind, and tides, where geological and human histories intersect.

İlkin transforms vintage family bedsheets using batik and wire to create flowing, wave-like sculptural forms. These are adorned with painted and embroidered details and suspended within the gallery, evoking the movement of water. The folded and layered fabrics serve as canvases for memory and storytelling, reflecting İlkin’s approach to found domestic textiles such as bedsheets, tablecloths, and curtains as repositories of everyday life and history.

The artist draws on archival photographs of women whose contributions to fishing, mining, and textile production helped shape St Ives’ social and industrial histories. İlkin collaborated with St Ives-based textile artist Jo McIntosh and local participants in workshops focused on family histories, local knowledge, and collective memory. Together, they created embroidered textile coverings for stones gathered from the surrounding shoreline, which are included in the installation.

Those Who Remember Their Births is part of the fifth collaborative iteration of the Artist Residency and Commissions Programme between Tate St Ives and SAHA. The exhibition is curated by Anne Barlow, Director of Tate St Ives, with Assistant Curator Dara McElligott, and supported by community curators Georgina Kennedy and Cassie Penn. Community contributors include Valerie Canavan, Ebby Rae Cotterill, Freya Cotterill-Prisk, Denise Morris, Gamze Polat, and Julie Tesseyman.

This exhibition follows İlkin’s recent solo show Tide at artSümer Gallery in Istanbul in 2026, continuing her exploration of themes such as care, labour, belonging, and the transmission of histories across generations through transformed domestic objects.