Lily Bates’ practice pushes boundaries between fine art and textile art through the laborious methods of using soft materials and crafting techniques. The bold use of colour and contrast throughout her work is made using a combination of found and bought materials, often up-cycling to give them a new lease of life. She sees this as having a soft collaboration with strangers and their unwanted belongings. Bates is usually working on multiple projects at once, to occupy the mind. Currently, she has two sides to her practice: one that is playful, has a childish nature to it and is aggressively fun, which allows the viewer to depict what they want to perceive; the other focuses on producing work conjured up by found materials, which portray the simplicity of everyday domestic life, using discarded and fragmented items collected in an obsessive nature, whilst adding comedic value.