Long, vibrant fabrics weave across the front of Bath’s Holburne Museum, looping around its pillars like ribbons. Inside, the cloths unfurl from one end of the ballroom to the other. In one room dedicated to 18th-century British painting, they line the perimeter like waves, drawing your eyes with bursts of colour – transforming the space from staid to something modern and immediate.
“The cloth is occupying the space,” explains Lubaina Himid. “It’s weaving itself into the history of this museum. It’s coming out from the fabric of the building.” There are 400 metres of Dutch fabric in Lost Threads, one of the artist’s most expansive and dramatic works to date. Each cloth is intended to reflect the movement of the oceans and rivers that were used to transport cotton, yarn and enslaved people – all of which enabled parts of Britain, including Bath, to become increasingly affluent in the 18th century.
