Bon Volks presents a three-day, free-to-access exhibition of drawings and textiles in posthumous dialogue between Rachelle and the late Diana Francis, alongside a participatory making workshop. Taking place across the Off Season weekend, the exhibition is joined by an embossing metal workshop from Beer Can Votives led by Billie M. Vigne, inviting moments of collective making, reflection, and exchange. Places for the workshop are limited; please book in advance via the link here.
Rachelle is a textile and social practice artist. Originally from a fashion background (18 years working as a couture embroidery designer for clients including Alaïa and Chanel), the death of her mother Diana in 2019 and the uncovering of her hidden archive of over 1000+ drawings, textiles and sculptures prompted Rachelle to create the With & Without Dianaproject. Aided by Arts Council England funding, this creative health project shares Diana's archive, story and artistic processes to help destigmatise, connect, support and inspire others. Rachelle also creates textile artworks in response to Diana's archive—posthumous conversations in cloth; an exploration of the connections, and cuts, within a relationship affected by a mother's mental health illness and subsequent addiction. An artist's book, Rachelle’s embroideries, and Diana's entire archive are all under proposal for acquisition by the Wellcome Collection.
Income raised from workshops will support the With & Without Diana workshop programme (with charities across Kent, Dover and Medway) and an exhibition sharing art’s ability to support wellbeing (Beaney House of Art and Knowledge, Canterbury 2026).
Exhibition suitable for all ages, free entry.
Come and make an articulated, embossed worry doll for Off Season Margate 2026!
Join artist Billie M Vigne in creating embossed, articulated creatures from beer cans that hold your worries tight to gift to Rachelle's project and posthumous collaboration with her mother- With & Without Diana.
In this 2 hour workshop, held at Bon Volks amongst Rachelle’s Mending a Better Ending exhibition, we will be creating worry doll puppets made from discarded drinks cans as votive offerings to be gifted to the exhibition. These works sit alongside Rachelle and Diana’s practices, and reflect shared themes of repair, reuse and care.
Beginning with a short introduction from Rachelle to Diana’s incredible artwork, Billie and Rachelle will touch on the crossovers and divergences between our practices and the works of her late mum Diana, taking us through ideas of memorial, crafting as a mode of archiving, catharsis and escape, and reuse/reworking.
During the workshop we will deconstruct discarded drinks cans, whittling out familiar and unfamiliar shapes, embossing them with mindful, doodled marks, that hold our worries and sensations following on from Diana’s methodologies. Riveting them together with wire to create little puppets, we will explore the parameters of what constitutes a worry doll or creature form, experimenting with the material through cutting, piercing and stitching with wire.
Workshop suitable for all ages.
£15p/p. Limited places, please book here.
Beer Can Votives
Billie M Vigne is an artist and metalsmith whose work revolves around the temperamental intricacies of chronic illness. In 2022, Billie began The Beer Can Votive project; a travelling forum of embossing workshops in which people make ex votos/votive offerings from recycled drinks cans. The project focuses on imbuing the metal with feelings, sensations and stories that speak of our own physiological experiences, challenging the historical narrative of their use as curative talismans.
