2013 > CLOTH & MEMORY

Cloth and Memory {2} is a site-specific exhibition located in the UNESCO World Heritage Site: Salts Mill in Yorkshire UK. The exhibition features 23 artists drawn from a UK and international cohort and runs from August 18th to November 3rd 2013.

What we wanted to do

Cloth and Memory was an ambitious international project exploring the expressive potency of cloth as a communicator of human experience through a series of two exhibitions held in Salts Mill, Saltaire, Yorkshire - a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The first in July and August 2012 featured three artists whose works were installed in the public gallery spaces and one un-restored space. The second exhibition, Cloth & Memory {2} was intended to be a response to the Mill and in particular to the room which used to be the Spinning Room, which will be specially opened to the public for this exhibition. This room is in the roof of Salts Mill and when the Mill was first built this room was the longest in Europe - 168m long. Apart from a new roof, the Spinning Room has not been restored, it is very much as it was when the Mill finally closed, and it is possible to find traces of the workers still in the room, which also still smells of wool.

What we achieved

Artists from the UK, Japan, Norway and Germany created work that responded to the space. Some with direct references to the history of Salts Mill or the history of the making of textiles; others have taken a more personal approach, placing private memories within the space. The works range from large scale interventions in space to highly intimate insertions within the fabric of the building, some more hidden than others. The final exhibition was a moving and beautiful response to a remarkable space, which had meaning and importance for the artists (artists comments). There were over 15,000 visitors and their response was overwhelmingly positive. The curator tours each week and the Seminars were consistently over-subscribed, local universities took the exhibition as the theme for projects and media response was evident.