Visit to Salt Mills, Saltaire

A year ago I combined taking some  plants to handover to Natural England  staff with visiting 'Cloth and Memory 2' at Salt Mills, Saltaire and although there is no exhibition  there at the moment, it worked well  so repeated it this year. Very mixed emotions as it's probably the end of my involvement  after nearly 25 years.  Arriving around 11.30  for discussions  and disbelief over coffee and cakes then a look around the Hockney exhibitions , time spent browsing in the book and art shops  , resisting the gorgeous jewellery ( I succumbed last year!). Most of all some time for contemplation  and reflection away from work, making plans on the trains   

During  CQ winter school  on rust marks with Alice Fox, we were having a discussion about Cloth and Memory exhibition, how interesting it was. People had different favourites and  many of us ( myself included) found that what stuck in our minds  after a year was not necessarily  what grabbed us at the time.  I was also looking around Saltaire this time with fresh eyes , seeing some of the  areas that inspired Alice, like the broken yellow lines on the cobbles. I got some strange looks taking this photo from the gangs of schoolboys that were hanging around the station!

Alice Fox ' Gifts From the Pavement'

 

  There was one piece of work by Machiko Agano from that exhibition  that was redisplayed in one of the entrance areas on the ground floor.  It looked very different in a  new context. Many of the Japanese pieces although  based on the themes of Cloth and Memory  do not seem so powerful in retrospect as those that were inspired directly from the building itself and the processes and people  it represents. The following photos are from last year.

Diana Harrison 'Handkerchiefs'  inspired by the flagstones

Jeanette Appleton " Production Line:People's Lives" Felt books/ledgers placed within the walls of the spinning room

Rachel Gray 'Shadow Pieces' stitched layered , patched and mended,  worked well with the peeling paint of the walls.

David Hockney ipad drawings

One of the reasons I arranged the meeting for a Wednesday was that so I could see  David Hockney's ' 25  Trees and other pictures' Besides the 3 huge photographs showing these trees in different seasons, finding beauty in the mundane ( it included a bus shelter!) there  was a projection room showing the latest drawings done on iphone or ipad which he sends regularly to the gallery.  Lots of vases of flowers ( glass works particularly well using this medium)  and other quick sketches, so lively.  'The Bigger Picture' at the RA a couple of years ago  remains for  me one of the most memorable exhibitions of recent years.

Remembering Cloth and Memory

My blogging has been rather patchy this year,  mainly with so much going on in work and play ( which is a good thing!) that there's been little time to reflect. Looking back through old posts as I do towards the end of the year, I realise  that  on several occasions I never got round to  reporting in full  as I'd promised on what I'd been up to.  For example in a post from July, I never did elaborate on seeing Bellowhead at 'Kew the Music';my starring role  (wearing orchid earrings!) in a film narrated by David Attenborough; on my trips to various orchid sites and  to Hampton Court Flower Show or to re-write my post on RA Summer Exhibition  that I accidently deleted while attempting to blog with my tablet!

Too  late now  but  before I forgot completely I did want to mention my visit to Cloth and Memory 2 at Salt Mills Saltaire. It's nearly 2 months ago when I  had a day trip combining handing over some precious Lady's Slipper Orchid seedlings with  seeing this exhibition. It had some of the same exhibiting artists as ' Bite Size' a couple of years ago but obviously on a completely different scale!!! The space, the  168m long spinning room, was amazing in itself and the way that the work  was derived from  its different qualities and memories was thought-provoking.

My  favourite piece was by Masae Bamba ( who also  made 'Black  Water' for 'Bite Size'): a large scale 'sea' of indigo cloth  printed with her daughters' first attempts at writing.

The peeling paint layers left on the walls were wonderful and I liked how Rachel Gray had referenced these, with several narrow brick-like works  of layered, patched, embroidered, printed images from the archives local to Saltaire  

 

Yoriko Yoneyama's  instillation of a web of dried rice threaded on fine thread was intriguing, reminding me of the rain outside ( and occasionally inside, there were strategically placed buckets...) blurring the images glimpsed through the camera obscura ( by Hannah Leighton-Boyce ) placed in the ventilation cavities.

You were encouraged to add your own memories of cloth - mine was photographed but didn't make it to the website. 

 

My CQ Journal quilts this year have the theme of indigo, many of them assembled from scraps. I was thinking of my experiences  at Saltaire when I was putting this one together: the  crumpled indigo  dyed strips of  'jemima' laid over dyed cotton wadding, slashed and peeled back to reveal underlying layers;  the fine  machine stitching using  white polyneon thread(slightly shiny); the effect of clouds and rain.