Caro Blount-Shah & Pat Fuller - Common Threads

Common Threads Poster MRCommon Threads exhibition takes a historical journey in to the industrial past, with a particular focus on textile manufacture and distribution, which played a huge role in the social and economic development of Bradford. Show-casing the work of two local artists, Caro Blount-Shah and Pat Fuller, it draws connections between the Bradford textile industry and the growth of global trade, highlighting the impact this had on millworkers as mechanisation and vast global demand took hold.

 


TA Common Threads 2It features an ambitious and creative curation technique. Red lines form a network between the pieces of work, symbolising the links between sound and image, industry and nature and the experience of people coming to terms with the path of progress and increasing consumerism.

 

 

 

CBS BambooCaro Blount-Shah’s work looks at visual traces left behind in the industrial landscape. She uses found images, photographs, tracings, rubbings and embossing to record the textile mills and the canals and rivers used to transport the raw materials and finished fabric bales.


The cyanotype and argyrotype prints are made using iron based photo sensitive chemistry on cotton paper. The large set of cyanotypes looks at plants used to make fabric, with embossed areas relating to textile history. As well as wool, Bradford mills produced fabric to sell throughout the world, with Ramie (from the nettle plant family), cotton, linen (from the Flax plant family) and silk.


CBS SoundIn this exhibition there are also carborundum prints which link sound with image. The sounds of a textile mill (e.g. steam engine, bobbin winder and looms) are used to make graphic prints. A poem by Munaver Shah, entitled ‘Woven’, evokes the sounds and hectic/frantic movements of the people, machines and equipment in the mill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

TA Common Threads 5Pat Fuller’s work explored the history and plight of mill workers in the 19th Century, addressing issues of globalisation and how technology from Jaquard to the Internet made it easy to transfer work around the world. Her aim was to highlight the consequent effect this had on the working conditions of all industrial workers, particularly women and their children. She was interested in how they patched together their lives, working in sometimes appallingly dangerous conditions, with few safety procedures. Occupational hazards included, deafness, arthritis, loss of limbs and respiratory diseases.


Her work used mixed media, textiles and stitching which raises awareness of the Bradford’s rich textile history and the value of craft skills and experience.

 

Dates: 

    1st June to 22nd June 2019

Artist:

    Caro Blount-Shah
    Pat Fuller

 

 

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46 Kirkgate Bradford

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