BRITISH TEXTILE BIENNIAL 2023
The industrial revolution transformed rural East Lancashire into an engine of fast fashion at the epicentre of a web that stretched across the globe; commandeering human and environmental resources across continents in a vicious cycle of labour, manufacture and trade that persists today and which we now know is unsustainable. This year, British Textile Biennial announces a programme that focuses on the issue of sustainability in textile production, asking whether it can ever be a regenerative enterprise, environmentally and socially.
Artists from Benin to Bangladesh present work that takes active steps to address the legacy of colonialism while others look back on its pre-industrial history. The third edition of British Textile Biennial 2023 (BTB23) traces the routes of fibres and fabrics across continents and centuries to and from the north of England in a series of commissions and exhibitions throughout October in the spaces left behind by the Lancashire textile industry. From the so-called ‘slave cloth’, spun and woven by hand on the Pennine moors, to the bales of used fast fashion that make their way from British high streets to the markets and toxic mountains of waste in West Africa, BTB23 follows that journey.
Image: Return to sender, Nest Collective. Photo courtesy of Spartmatseto. Image above: Dead White Man, Jeremy Hutchinson. Photo courtesy of Dani Pujalte.
Highlights of this year’s British Textile Biennial include a keynote by Gus Casely-Hayford, installations by Nest Collective, Victoria Udondian, Tenant of Culture, and Thierry Oussou, a new performance by Common Wealth Theatre, new commissions by Christine Borland, Nick Jordan and Jacob Cartwright, sculpture by Jeremy Hutchison and a major exhibition by South Asian artists from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Britain.
Artists from Benin to Bangladesh present work that takes active steps to address the legacy of colonialism while others look back on its pre-industrial history. The third edition of British Textile Biennial 2023 (BTB23) traces the routes of fibres and fabrics across continents and centuries to and from the north of England in a series of commissions and exhibitions throughout October in the spaces left behind by the Lancashire textile industry. From the so-called ‘slave cloth’, spun and woven by hand on the Pennine moors, to the bales of used fast fashion that make their way from British high streets to the markets and toxic mountains of waste in West Africa, BTB23 follows that journey.
Image: Return to sender, Nest Collective. Photo courtesy of Spartmatseto. Image above: Dead White Man, Jeremy Hutchinson. Photo courtesy of Dani Pujalte.
Highlights of this year’s British Textile Biennial include a keynote by Gus Casely-Hayford, installations by Nest Collective, Victoria Udondian, Tenant of Culture, and Thierry Oussou, a new performance by Common Wealth Theatre, new commissions by Christine Borland, Nick Jordan and Jacob Cartwright, sculpture by Jeremy Hutchison and a major exhibition by South Asian artists from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Britain.
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