Non-practitioners tend to see the world of textiles through the doily tinted spectacles of the BBC’s The Great British Sewing Bee or else through the soot-filled eyes of William Blake’s “dark satanic mills”. The filter of postindustrialisation frames the spinning rooms and weaving sheds as bygone, other; demolition and development have sought to erase the epoch-making heritage.
But textiles and the industry that grew up around them in the former colonies and north of England continue to inform artistic creation and debate. In October, the third edition of the British Textile Biennial will trace the routes of fibres and fabrics across continents and centuries to and from the north of England in a series of commissions and exhibitions in museums, galleries, former mills, theatres and historical buildings across east Lancashire.
