Poppy Mannion (b. 2001, Brighton) creates art that explores femininity through the medium of embroidery. Her practice transforms thread, a material historically bound to gendered creative expression, into a distinctive visual language that probes the complexities of feminine identity. Through her engagement with textile arts, she creates works that simultaneously embrace delicacy and radical self-assertion.

Graduating from Chelsea College of Arts in 2023, Poppy's final body of work titled ‘Bathroom Series’ presented a collection of embroidered textile books. Drawing from her personal diaries spanning childhood to present day, the series offers an unflinching exploration of female sexualisation and self-discovery. The books display, in thread, the artist's experience of ‘growing into womanhood’, tackling complex themes of sex and desire with raw honesty. The works are intimate and vulnerable, both in content and form. With the artist's new body of work she continues to explore and expand upon these themes. Her new pieces burst with kinetic energy, as she trades careful, considered stitches for bold, gestural mark-making that pushes the boundaries of her medium.

This technical evolution mirrors a deeper philosophical shift; her figures, once contained within notebook-sized spaces, now command large-scale works with a presence that speaks to an emboldened, uncompromising femininity. Despite institutional pressure to categorise her practice as textiles, Poppy’s positioning of her work within fine art discourse becomes a significant act, challenging the hierarchies that have historically marginalised feminine creative expression. The traditions of the medium are also challenged, with the complex and frenzied undersides of the canvases often presented as the final works. Both her dynamic female forms and innovative approach to embroidery make Poppy's work a rebellious assertion of what it is to be a woman.

Through this synthesis of form and content, Mannion creates work that resonates with both historical weight and contemporary urgency. Her practice is both achingly personal and a contribution to wider cultural discourse about gender, sexualisation, and the place of traditionally feminine arts in contemporary culture.

Poppy’s salon catalogue (May 2024) can be viewed here, and a catalogue from the PSLab Residency (June 2024) for which she was selected can viewed here.