Justin Dingwall: The Path of the Needle

Doyle Wham and Wilton Way Gallery are delighted to present South African artist Justin Dingwall’s second UK solo exhibition: The Path of the Needle. Dingwall (b. 1983, Johannesburg) is a renowned visual artist whose practice combines photography, textile and collage.

The exhibition features seven artworks created in 2025, each born from a photograph taken by Dingwall which is then transferred onto linen using a heat-based method. The original image is then deconstructed and reconstructed, with areas of negative space highlighted through the layering of additional fabrics. Finally, additional motifs, often intricate and symbolic details, are hand-stitched across the surface by the artist. Through this intimate process, each photograph is transformed into a unique, multi-layered and three-dimensional artwork.

In The Path of the Needle, Dingwall’s materials are never neutral. Quilts and blankets are cut apart and reassembled into new compositions, simultaneously evoking warmth, protection and domestic life, but also fragility and impermanence. For Dingwall, the act of embroidery reflects the nature of memory itself: imperfect, shifting and stitched together across time. Across the series, layered fabrics become metaphors for histories carried forward.

The repeated motif of vessels and vases in works such as Earthen Vessels and Laden symbolises the role our bodies play as containers of memory, enduring yet delicate. In the miniature works Wayfinder and Site, shell beads are sown into the backgrounds, offering an intimate archive of childhood memory. The act of hand-sowing also becomes a meditation on care and remembrance, a quiet resistance to forgetting. The Southern Cross constellation is present too, reflecting guidance and the search for meaning, while an embroidered glass of milk alludes to the shifting nature of perception over time.

View works from the exhibition on Artsy here.