On its own Salts' Mill is a wonder to behold. If you add in a world class exhibition something quite extraordinary happens.
23 international artists were asked to respond to the Spinning Room space at Salts Mill. The room is 168 metres long and when you walk in it takes your breathe away. The artists we met described the same feeling and it must have been terrifying to know there was some sort of response required. Aside from the impressive work the thing I found most remarkable is that no two artists came up with anything at all similar to each other. Each interpretation of the task was completely unique. That helps me to understand that the tasks I am set on my course can be interpreted very widely as long as I have the dialogue to show my rationale.
When I go to an exhibition I try to focus on just one or two artists I particularly enjoy. At Salts' Mill this was impossible. The work was outstanding but the enthusiasm of Lesley Miller, the curator who led our tour, was so infectious it was beyond me to select a favourite.
There were some pieces I found very moving.
Peta Jacobs huge devore image of the movers and shakers of the Bradford textile world in the mid 1950's was very poignant by virtue of the men being supremely confident yet so vulnerable. This is not a description the men would have welcomed or expected. The vulnerability was accentuated by the fragility of the fabric Jacobs made, almost ghostlike.
Caren Garfen
My inclination is always to "people" places like Salts' Mill and Garfen makes it easy. Given the right circumstances (privacy and time) this could easily make me cry. Garfen highlights the women who worked at the Mill by making small plaques exquisitely made and minutely stitched. She gives them life with names, addresses and which mill they worked in. Unlike the wealthy men in Jacobs work these women were vulnerable not to social change but to the harsh working conditions prevailing at the time. These women are largely forgotten but this work may provoke memories as local folk recognise relatives.
Reece Clements is one of a long line of family members to contribute to the history of the Spinning Room and it is probably this connection that makes his work so powerful. The family layers are echoed in the multi layered approach to his exhibit and it is interesting that it is the surrounding architecture that has this power. There is a feel to this that I find hard to define.
There was other work that I found fascinating and inventive. Kari Steihaug's unravelling jumper. Yoriko Yoneyama's suspended web of rice threaded on fine cotton and Caroline Bartlett's intriguing approach to using embroidery hoops. How I kept my hands off the felt ledgers by Jeanette Appleton I'll never know.
It seems very simplistic to say I loved it all but it would be quite true.
The seminar in the afternoon was well attended but the conversation with the artists was quite intense and very revealing. It gave me another way of thinking about and valuing my own work. I feel privileged to have seen Cloth and Memory and its impact will be evident in my work forever.
What is cloth to me?
This is the question asked of various people in the exhibition catalogue and it prompted some thoughts of my own.
To me cloth defines time. From being very young I remember events by the clothes I was wearing. Pick an event and I'll tell you what I was wearing, where it was from and probably how much it cost.
As a child I treasured hand me down clothes because I admired the bigger girls who had worn them before me and sometimes left their mark. To this day I can feel the texture of a pink lacy dress I loathed (I was 3).
How my mother afforded it I'll never know but she bought Viyella fabric and had school blouses made for me - my first experience of quality cloth and the notion that cloth can be sewn.
I was in trouble at school for asking for "proper" fabric to sew not the standard issue binka and for being picky about the colours.
This question has prompted lots of thinking and memories.
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