Louise Bourgeois @ Hayward Gallery

In the last two decades of her career, Louise Bourgeois began to incorporate clothes from all stages of her life into her art.

This developed into a varied body of work – from monumental installations, to figurative sculptures and abstract collages – incorporating textiles such as bed linen, handkerchiefs, tapestry, and needlepoint.

Bourgeois’s fabric works mine the themes of identity and sexuality, trauma and memory, guilt and reparation that are central to her long and storied career.

‘I have always had a fascination with the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair the damage. It’s a claim to forgiveness.’