Threads, a major exhibition at Arnolfini – features 21 contemporary international artists and makers, who use textiles as their chosen medium.
Celebrating material and making, these artists use the storytelling power of textiles to connect with past traditions, find commonalities between cultures, time and place, and to ‘breathe stories into materials’.*
Threads encompasses processes of weaving and spinning, rug-making, stitching and embroidery, print, knit, threading, mending and found materials, with materials and techniques handed down, reused and reinvented.
Co-curated by leading textile artist Alice Kettle, Threads weaves throughout Arnolfini’s three floors, to reveal how textiles ‘remember’**, how memory is ‘embedded within the process of making’*** and how new narratives are created.
Bristol Textile Memory Map – listen to some stories and memories shared by the local community, and find out more about Bristol’s long history of textile production and Bristol’s current textile community. Maybe go and visit some of these places on the map!
