Ruth Gilmour

a work in progress 🪐

‘Even Moonbeams Can Be Unravelled’ is part of a small selection of works currently available directly from my studio, find the link in my bio. A new & updated website is also live, I’m excited to share it ✨ 🎥: @itsdavydd

Two of our international artists, @lindazhengova and @rthglmr . These works by Linda are from her series Heist, where intimate black and white portraiture blurs the line between memory and fantasy—capturing fleeting encounters that feel both personal and imagined. Set against this, Ruth Gilmour’s sculptural silk prints extend the dialogue into material and form. With their deep, immersive surfaces, works such as The Universe Gathers Around Dreams of Tulips explore the body, healing and transformation—where image and material become inseparable. Presented by @thomashjelmstudio 🎥 By @douggillen for @fifthwalltv

‘The Body is a Channel’ (detail) Showing as part of the group exhibition ‘ARE WE REALLY HERE?’, curated by @hbh_gallery & opening next week ✨

Working across textile, installation and research-based practice, Ruth Gilmour’s @rthglmr work is intrinsically tied to the material and sensory properties of silk. Rooted in an ongoing dialogue between body, material and the natural world, her practice explores themes of healing, transience and transformation—drawing on both personal experience and wider biomedical and ecological frameworks. Through processes of printing, layering and material investigation, Gilmour treats silk as both medium and collaborator—its absorbent, responsive qualities becoming central to how meaning is formed. Her work often reflects a deep engagement with care, vulnerability and the body, positioning material as a site of knowledge, memory and repair. Based between Denmark and London, Gilmour has exhibited internationally, with presentations at institutions including @copenhagen_contemporary and Sølvberget Galleri. Her work has been widely supported through major grants and awards, including Statens Kunstfond, the European Prize for Applied Arts, and the Danish Arts Foundation, where her work is also held in public collections. Ruth will present 4 new works for the exhibition. For all inquiries please email [email protected] and head over to our website to learn more HBHgallery.com

Ruth Gilmour, 2025 @rthglmr — #ruthgilmour #silkartist

‘My Porous Work’, produced as part of my project ‘Thin Skin, Thin Places’ in 2025 for the group exhibition ‘Surfaced’ @beaconsfield_gallery_vauxhall , and as phd research @royalcollegeofart , was enormously inspired by Olga Ravn’s ‘My Work’, and her conversation with David Naimon on Between the Covers. 
I produced this small publication to bring together threads of autofiction, medical journals, textile processes, herbal traditions, rituals, and digital imagery. It draws on the title and aspects of ‘My Work’, echoing and emulating Ravn’s introduction of characters, her blending (or refusal) of genre, and how she calls upon non-human narrators. I feel I am very slow to develop as a writer, and even slower to recognise myself as one, or, even more simply, as one who enjoys the act of writing - I tussle with the process in a very different way that I do to making and I don’t understand it yet. But then I read, and the words of others unravels and blasts open so many new possibilities, pulling me to participate somehow. ‘My Porous Work’ was an attempt to speak, in part, a little like Ravn to understand something new about the potential of writing. The result is full of typos and formatting flaws as making it felt like a spilling that didnt really call for proofing and perfecting. In the end, it revealed something about the porosity of life and practice, and how words can absorb and secrete experiences of dis-ease.

Printed on standard paper, hole-punched and bound with steel clips, it was displayed on a duvet-covered steel table alongside my offering of rosemary and chamomile tea. The work formed part of a larger installation, where abstract images, dyed with rosemary on silk, floated across the wall.

With thanks to @olgaravn , whose art, writing, and research opens many questions for my work, and no doubt that of many others, to think through. Also, thanks to @dnaimon for his exceptionally generous podcasting.

Inspired after some warmer days in London. Visited @chelsea_physic_garden and saw some rosemary bushes abundant & in bloom (a woman must be in charge). Pleasure to see so many friendly faces, great hearing more about @jonathanmathewboyd and @rachel.garfield research and LOVED spending time in Special Collections. 5 days always plenty overwhelming on a delicate nervous system, but already looking forward to next time - I’ll be showing with @hbh_gallery end of April. I have a mountain to write before then - the biggest, most challenging privilege to stretch my thinking & knowing around silk, plants, and magical healing. Grateful I’ll get to experience magnolias in bloom twice this year 🌸

Something Bright, (Then Holes)

During my showing of ‘Thin Skin, Thin Places’ @beaconsfield_gallery_vauxhall with @royalcollegeofart last November, I served some tea - chamomile to soothe, rosemary for clarity. The recipe was included in my publication ‘My Porous Work’, - part journal, herbal, visuals, medical records and more (here a digital screenshot), and an etched aluminium plaque guided visitors, listing the ingredients and their properties. Also pictured: handbag whisky miniatures, poured into toddies for those wanting warmth ❤️‍🔥 @jh_tanq 📸 🫶🏻

Metamorphing silk — a tangled state within an ongoing process of care — captured by @itsdavydd during a studio visit earlier this winter ✨

Tulip ~ of the underworld (tala) defence (pAna) (read in translation from the Hungarian tulipàn) 📸: Bernie Boston. Vietnam War protest, the Pentagon, 1967