Blueprint: Fieldwork in Textiles
Emerging from the South Manchester quilting scene, a series of stitched works considers the legacy of textiles and the future of craft communities
Friday 05/04 Drop in 14.00-19.00
Saturday 06/04 Drop in 12.00–17.00
Samuel Alexander Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Rd, Manchester M13 9PL
Blueprint investigates the quilt as a materialisation of women’s time into stitches, squares and cloth. It contemplates what it means to bring something into being, to document experience through handmade objects and to work collaboratively. This exhibition unpicks the network between crafters, their tools of making and their objects of creation to examine the potency of quiltmaking and their communities as a critical area of visual anthropology research. Threading together anthropology and craft, my quilted work, guided by the expert craftswomen within Manchester’s quilting circles, uses textiles as a vector to explore the often overlooked and underappreciated world of women’s work, illuminating the values, relationships, memories and meaning hidden and observed in the material.
I am a Manchester-based visual anthropologist specialising in craft communities and material culture. I see my work as a love letter to the long-stitched biography of lives spent bent over cloth, revering their experience whilst reimagining and interlacing my own.
