I'm delighted to be involved in this year's Saltaire Arts Trail, where I will be working with Hannah Lamb on a new performance work called Lasting Impressions. Aiming to provoke conversations about the value of cloth and clothing, we will be collecting an archive of Arts Trail visitors' clothing as impressions in porcelain. Visitors will be invited to emboss porcelain tiles with textures from their clothing, an edge of a dress, the corner of a cuff, a coat zip... In exchange for leaving a mark from their clothing, each person will be offered the chance to have a gold or silver stitch added to their clothes.
Salts Mill is a former textile mill in Saltaire, just a few miles from the centre of Bradford, West Yorkshire. When it was built in 1853 it was the largest factory in the world. Lasting Impressions will take place in the Spinning Room in the roof space of the mill, a space not normally open to the public. The room is 168m long and once contained 16,380 cap spindles for spinning yarn. Whilst many visitors to Salts Mill will be well aware of the mill’s textile heritage, how many make the connection to the clothes they wear day-to-day? This project asks us to consider the cloth we carry with us all the time; Where does it come from? Where will it go? What impression will it leave on our own lives? What mark will it leave on the world?
Lasting Impressions takes place as part of Saltaire Arts Trail from 28th to 30th May 2016 and is supported by Arts Council England. Saltaire Arts Trail presents contemporary craft and visual arts in houses and historic venues around Saltaire village, a UNESCO World Heritage site. For further deals about the performances including times, and about other events during the Arts Trail please visit the website.