Tailored

Sunny Bank Mills, Farsley, Pudsey

The 62 Group returns to Sunny Bank Mill, West Yorkshire with a new exhibition titled Tailored.

Tailored: from the Latin verb to cut and a word associated particularly with suits and suiting. 

The cloth produced at Sunny Bank Mill was most commonly used for suits and although they weren’t produced there, Leeds is well known as the birthplace of that great suit producer and supplier, Marks & Spencer.

Several artists take their lead from the fundamentals of the tailoring process; pattern making, cutting, tacking, construction. The specialist stitches themselves, tailor tacking, padding stitches, etc., once isolated from garment construction, become a new language of mark or construction. Wool and other suiting materials also feature strongly in the selected works, but often constructed or configured in unexpected ways.

Whilst making and material-led responses figure strongly, so do more graphic and narrative approaches. Highly personal, compelling and thought provoking themes lie behind many of the works in the show. The life of cloth and clothing, as well as its connection through time and place demonstrates the unique roll of textiles in our lives. Clothing as a second skin becomes a metaphor for the body and also provides a vehicle to explore identity and self image.

This exhibition demonstrates the versatility of the 62 Group of Textile Artists and the great diversity of approaches and individual approaches to textile as an art form. The artists demonstrate great skill in making, alongside a highly attuned sense of the role of their artistic medium in making sense of the world around them.

Tailored coincides with the Threads Festival, 12-14th May at Sunny Bank Mills: