This autumn, Tate St Ives presents Those Who Remember Their Births, a new site-specific commission by Turkish artist Gözde İlkin. Developed during two residencies in St Ives in 2026, the installation brings together sculpture, painting and embroidery to explore the relationships between landscape, memory and women’s lived experiences.
During her time in St Ives, İlkin became interested in the coastline as a living archive, observing how waves, wind and tides continually reshape the landscape and how geological and human histories become intertwined. These encounters informed the development of Those Who Remember Their Births, which explores how memory can be carried through landscapes, textiles, everyday objects and shared histories.
Inspired by the shifting movements of the sea, İlkin transforms vintage family bedsheets with batik and wire to create flowing, wave-like sculptural forms adorned with painted and embroidered details and suspended within the gallery space. Drawing on archival photographs of women whose contributions to fishing, mining and textile production helped shape the town’s social and industrial histories, the installationweaves these local histories together with motifs inspired by plants, stones and the coastline. Folded and layered fabrics echo the movement of water while becoming canvases for memory and storytelling, creating an environment in which personal and collective histories converge.
Throughout her multidisciplinary practice, İlkin works with found domestic textiles including bedsheets, tablecloths and curtains that carry traces of everyday life. Rather than treating these fabrics simply as artistic materials, she considers them repositories of memory, capable of preserving experiences and stories that can be absent from written histories. In her work she transforms familiar objects to explore themes of care, labour, belonging and coexistence, as well as the ways histories are carried between generations.
Community collaboration is an important part of Those Who Remember Their Births. İlkin works alongside St Ives-based textile artist Jo McIntosh and local participants in a workshop exploring family histories, local knowledge and collective memory. Together, they create embroidered textile coverings for stones gathered from the surrounding shoreline. These works form part of the installation, reflecting İlkin’s interest in creating space for multiple voices and developing artworks through dialogue and shared experience.
This installation is part of the fifth collaborative iteration of the Artist Residency and Commissions Programme between Tate St Ives and SAHA, which to date has supported artists Burçak Bingöl, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, Cansu Çakar and Ahmet Doğu İpek.
Gözde İlkin’s residency and installation continue a programme designed to foster artistic exchange and research between St Ives and Türkiye.
