Textile Heritage Retold; Drawing Inspiration from the Hawick Textile Archives
- Submitting institution
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Heriot-Watt University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 42851478
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- University of Bolton
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- January
- Year of first exhibition
- 2019
- URL
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https://futurescan.figshare.com/articles/figure/Textile_Heritage_Retold_Drawing_Inspiration_from_the_Hawick_Textile_Archives/11956752
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This collection of textile-based artworks and collage drawings was exhibited at the double-blind peer-reviewed 2019 Futurescan 4 conference at the University of Bolton. The research, selected and studied over a two month period, used original artefacts curated from hundreds of years of textile history preserved in the Hawick Textile Archives and the Scottish College of Textiles in Galashiels, to provide visual commentary on a community bound by a once-thriving industry. The exhibit explores how the ‘fabric’ of life is embedded within local, indigenous textiles. Drawing on research by, among others, Gale, C, and Kaur, J. (The Textile Book, Berg, 2002), Spivack, E. (Worn Stories, Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), Britt, H., Stephen-Cran, J. and Bremner, E. (“Awaken: Contemporary Fashion & Textile Interpretation of Archival Material” in Britt, H., Wade, S. and Walton, K. eds. Futurescan 2: Collective Voices, 2013, 125-137), as well as historical research into the woollen and textile industry in the Scottish Borders, this exhibition offers a method of capturing the essence of a community which built a global reputation on its textile manufacturing and heritage. The work explores the familiar rise and decline of an industry, the temporal nature of success, the short-termism of profit-driven decision making, and the subjugating effect of globalization. It uses hand-rendered and digital approaches, such as computer-aided design and sublimation printing, which offer scope to further manipulate the original images through, for example, coloration and change in scale. The vintage stockings used as a substrate for the final collages pay homage to the beginning of an industry whose foundations were laid in framework-knitted hose. The work highlights the importance of museums and archives in making sense of textile heritage while inspiring new work through alternative visual constructs to tell stories past and present, intending to re-invigorate and re-appropriate these heritage textiles and artefacts.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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