The Fabric of Making

2013, PROJECT/COMMISSION

Cloth & Memory {2}, Salts Mill, Saltaire
Commissioned 21m bolt of woollen cloth and poem

Working with history, craft, language and place for the international site-responsive Textile Exhibition Cloth & Memory {2} at Salts Mill conceived and curated by Professor Lesley Millar.

The UK was once at the centre of the world’s cloth industry and Salts Mill, Saltaire a model village for workers at Titus Salt’s woollen mill. Research was based upon relationship between environment, work, making and living at a unique historic site. The mill workers were at one with town, the mill and its machines. Time was spent researching the language of making cloth and the impact of the textile trade upon our language through the lives and activities of mill workers making a roll call of words associated with making and living, were woven into the selvedge of a locally commissioned cloth to recall history of the fabric, the workers and their lives.

A history lost and discarded as the material’s selvedge edge is cut away before it is used.

This work is one in a series of projects in which I work alongside threatened craft industries as an intrinsic part of a conversation on making.

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