British Textile Biennial 2023 - Private View

We are very pleased to announce a trip to attend a Private View of the third edition of the British Textile Biennial, bringing together 'craft' and 'fine art' curators. Exploring the legacies of the cotton industry, the Biennial presents new artist commissions, exhibitions and performances in galleries, museums, former mills and other rarely accessible spaces across Pennine Lancashire. Directors Jenny Rutter and Laurie Peake, will guide the group whilst we drive through various key points of encounter, including artworks by Lubaina Himid, Alice Kettle and Jeremy Hutchison.

Itinerary:

10.40 - 11.15 Pick up from Preston Station 10.40

11.15 - 45 Pendle Heritage Centre - Christine Borland, Projection Cloth

12.00 - 12.15 Nelson Technology Centre - Eva Sajovic, End of Empire

12.40 - 13.15 Queen St Mill - Cottonopolis Collective & Madhu Mani

13.30 - 13.45 Townley Hall  - Rebecca Chesney, Conditions at Present

14.05 - 14.35 Goodshaw Chapel - Nick Jordan & Jacob Cartwright, Lark Song

15.00 - 15.45 The Whitaker, Fragments of our time, curated by Uthra Rajgopal

16.00 - 19.00 Blackburn - all venues including launch event

19.00 Option of coach back to Preston for fast train to London

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More information about the Biennial can be found here.

British Textile Biennial returns in autumn 2023 with new artist commissions, exhibitions and performances presented against the backdrop of the impressive historic industrial infrastructure in Pennine Lancashire. Using the sites and spaces left by the cotton industry as inspiration, context and venue, we ask, can the making of textiles be a regenerative act?

The industrial revolution transformed the quiet rural backwater of East Lancashire into an engine of textile production at the epicentre of a web that stretched across the globe; commandeering human and environmental resources across continents in a cycle of labour, manufacture and trade which we now know is unsustainable. The Lancashire landscape and its inhabitants are shaped by the industry that grew over two centuries and has now all but disappeared, leaving an indelible mark on both people and places.

BTB23 invites national and international artists to explore more sustainable relationships between the land, the people who live on it and the textiles that come out of it, investigating pre-industrial models with handloom weavers spinning wool from the animals they farm, whether on the moors of Lancashire or the slopes of the Himalayas, or proposing contemporary alternatives from cotton plantations in Benin to recycled garments in Dhaka and growing flax in Blackburn.

As in previous years, BTB23 will present its exhibitions, installations and performances in former mills and other rarely accessible spaces, such as Blackburn’s Cotton Exchange and the Goodshaw Chapel in partnership with English Heritage, bringing added resonance and meaning to the work, alongside a range of events and activities for the public to engage with. In 2021, BTB showed 21 exhibitions with 38 artists, presented in 13 indoor and five outdoor spaces with 65,893 attendances showing an increase from 54,375 visits in 2019.