See below the images for information
The spinning hall at Saltaire is now silenced and emptied, stilled from being a place of noise, activity and industrial production where lives were lived out in a day to day routine of repetitious activity amongst the clatter of machinery. The walls themselves seemed to seep cloth prompting imaginings for the artist, of wool pushing through the built outer skin of the building, and leaking into it with the smells and oils of its production. Whilst production is stilled, residues of such activity remain inserted into cracks and clinging to metal beams. There is a strong sense of presence, and absence, of a bygone era of industrial manufacture when industries such as textile and ceramics were central to the economic life of Britain. Salts Mill is embedded in the community through architectural, cultural and social structures. Ideas of skin, bone, membrane; a layered dermis, came to mind in her explorations together with ideas of networks of social, industrial, public and private relations, processes and materiality connecting the building itself with the idea of cloth as silent witness to the routines of daily lives.
In her response to the site for this exhibition, Caroline was drawn to this notion of the intimate in such a monumental space. Framed by the immensity and silence of the surrounding architectural space she wanted to make a work of quiet intensity which explores ‘the texture of the intimate ' ‘….a space of close vision, the curl of a hair, the twist of a thread, the crease of a cloth’. Penina Barnett talks about the ‘poetics of cloth’ as ‘composed of folds, fragments and surfaces of infinite complexity. The fragment bears witness to a broken whole: yet it is also a site of uncertainty from which to start over: it is where the mind extends beyond fragile boundaries, beyond frayed and indeterminate edges, expanding in the fluidity of the smooth.’ She talks about the fold as being without beginning or end. This resonated with Caroline both in terms of the site and in relation to previous work and explorations of the fold.
Embroidery hoops are stretched with woolen cloth into which is mounted a small porcelain roundel imprinted with an impression taken from a section of cloth (folded, creased, crumpled) or clothing (pinafore, apron, shawl). A stitched drawing, just under the skin of the cloth, spreads out from the porcelain impression. The fabric drapes from the hoops adopting markings and a depth of colour as though soaking up a history of spillages, stains and oils from the floor. A network of threads tie the work to the building, each carrying labels referencing the names of mills, dye works or weaving sheds in a geographical trajectory from Shipley to Bradford. These are sourced from an inventory supplied by Yorkshire Industrial Heritage, taking in Shipley (12), Bolton (3), Horton (45), Heaton (4), Manningham (18) and Bradford (56). Whilst some of these buildings have been demolished, others have retained manufacturing connections and others have changed their use, part of a cycle of degeneration and regeneration of which Salts Mill forms a part.
The outer edges of the wooden hoops carry the names of different types of woolen cloth or wool mixed with other fibres. Many of these names have been taken from the inventory of goods exhibited by some of these Yorkshire mills at the Great Exhibition in 1851. Some are fabrics which have disappeared from our vocabulary, whilst others remain known to us and are still in production.
1] P.Barnett. “Folds, Fragments, Surfaces; Towards a Poetics of Cloth” in Textures of Memory: The Poetics of Cloth [exhibition catalogue] (Nottingham: Angel Row Gallery) 1999
at Saltaire
In her response to the site for this exhibition, Caroline was drawn to this notion of the intimate in such a monumental space. Framed by the immensity and silence of the surrounding architectural space she wanted to make a work of quiet intensity which explores ‘the texture of the intimate ' ‘….a space of close vision, the curl of a hair, the twist of a thread, the crease of a cloth’. Penina Barnett talks about the ‘poetics of cloth’ as ‘composed of folds, fragments and surfaces of infinite complexity. The fragment bears witness to a broken whole: yet it is also a site of uncertainty from which to start over: it is where the mind extends beyond fragile boundaries, beyond frayed and indeterminate edges, expanding in the fluidity of the smooth.’ She talks about the fold as being without beginning or end. This resonated with Caroline both in terms of the site and in relation to previous work and explorations of the fold.
Embroidery hoops are stretched with woolen cloth into which is mounted a small porcelain roundel imprinted with an impression taken from a section of cloth (folded, creased, crumpled) or clothing (pinafore, apron, shawl). A stitched drawing, just under the skin of the cloth, spreads out from the porcelain impression. The fabric drapes from the hoops adopting markings and a depth of colour as though soaking up a history of spillages, stains and oils from the floor. A network of threads tie the work to the building, each carrying labels referencing the names of mills, dye works or weaving sheds in a geographical trajectory from Shipley to Bradford. These are sourced from an inventory supplied by Yorkshire Industrial Heritage, taking in Shipley (12), Bolton (3), Horton (45), Heaton (4), Manningham (18) and Bradford (56). Whilst some of these buildings have been demolished, others have retained manufacturing connections and others have changed their use, part of a cycle of degeneration and regeneration of which Salts Mill forms a part.
The outer edges of the wooden hoops carry the names of different types of woolen cloth or wool mixed with other fibres. Many of these names have been taken from the inventory of goods exhibited by some of these Yorkshire mills at the Great Exhibition in 1851. Some are fabrics which have disappeared from our vocabulary, whilst others remain known to us and are still in production.
1] P.Barnett. “Folds, Fragments, Surfaces; Towards a Poetics of Cloth” in Textures of Memory: The Poetics of Cloth [exhibition catalogue] (Nottingham: Angel Row Gallery) 1999
at Saltaire
