Residency

Great news! I've just found out that I've got a residency at Armley Mills which is an Industrial museum in Leeds and is one of the largest textile museums in the world. The residency will run between October and December this year and I'll spend at between one to two months making work at and installing the exhibition. The show will run in December. I'll also be doing a talk and a family workshop.

The residency is a new art initiative at the Mill and it has been set up by a steering group composed of local artists who have organised a fantastic gallery and working space at the mill, and the group were awarded funds to finance the residencies and the MillSpace Gallery. The group hope that bringing artists into the mill will creatively open up previously unseen aspects of the museum. They also aim to bring in a new audience and to make the experience of looking round the museum a more active one.

In my proposal I mentioned that I was interested in exploring the tension between industrialisation and the working class people who worked in the mill. The mill, which was once the biggest woollen mill in the world is full of the machines which, over time, will have pushed the production rate higher and taken away any handmade element and therefore any sense of achievement and pride from the workers. I want to explore the repetitive and monotonous nature of the machines and pitch it against the disappearance of craft.

The mill had an open day for interested artists and on this visit we were shown into the archives where I was really interested in the large collection of negatives showing engineering drawings for machines. I want to explore how these drawings can be projected and animated, onto static objects, which will be the metaphor for the workers. (That's my starting point!)

The mill is a vast, amazing place where there are endless opportunities and inspiration for artists as there are rooms and rooms of machinery and historical objects from the 18th century to the present day. The museum tells the history of of manufacturing in Leeds which includes textiles, clothing, printing and engineering. There is also a working cinema and section devoted to the development of cinema history! I also hope to work with the film archives and curate a programme and film screenings. Did you know that the world's first moving pictures were filmed on Leeds bridge by Louis Le Prince in October 1888?
Here's the link to the museum http://www.leeds.gov.uk/armleymills/