Richard McVetis is an artist and maker living and working in London. As one of the UK’s leading artists working in embroidery, Richard has transformed the understanding and appreciation of a previously undervalued medium. McVetis' practice centres around drawing and process, specifically hand embroidery. He explores themes of geology, cosmology, the language of time, permanence, and impermanence.

Spanning the macro and micro, Richard McVetis records time and space through multiple dots, lines, and crosses, exploring the subtle differences that emerge through ritualistic and habitual making. The inscribed stitches mark the hand’s rhythms, a delicate performance of obsessive intricacy, refinement, and gesture. They record human presence, time and decay, each stitch or line acting as a marker for lived time, an embodiment of thought and patience. These physical, tactile, and repetitive creation modes allow him to see and think, to occupy a space.

Richard McVetis believes in the power and potential of materials to reveal and understand our intrinsic relationship to nature and our place in it. McVetis uses a range of media, including drawing, installation, and textiles, to explore his perception of space and time. His minimalist work is an endless exploration, not just of form but of the reclamation and potential of process and repetition within stitch. In his work, McVetis focuses on themes of technology, time and labour and sees strength and versatility in embroidery.