A brand-new major art exhibition begins at Arnolfini next weekend

A brand-new major art exhibition begins at Arnolfini next weekend

Posted on: 26 Jun 2023

Threads: ‘Breathing Stories Into Materials’ begins next month and will run until October featuring twenty-one contemporary textile artists and makers.

 

The new exhibition runs at Arnolfini, Bristol from Saturday 8 July until Sunday 1 October 2023.

 

The new Arnolfini exhibition will celebrate material and making, allowing the artists to use the storytelling power of textiles to connect with the past, finding commonalities between cultures, time and place – breathing ‘stories into materials’ in the process.

 

Find out more on the Arnolfini website.

 

 

Threads includes a range of different processes of weaving and spinning, rug-making, stitching and embroidery, print, knitting, threading, mending and found materials, with materials and techniques that have been handed down from generation to generation and reused and reinvented along the way.

 

In the exhibition, artists explore narratives of movement and exchange, focusing on the environment, sustainability, labour, trade, migration, post-colonial narratives, identity, politics, community, and a whole lot more.

 

Through the act of making, these artists will engage with the idea of how we remember, questioning where, how and with what the work has been created. Threads are unravelled as new stories intertwine and new audiences engage with their own memories through materials and making.

Anya Paintsil, God will punish him (2021)

 

The exhibition is co-curated by renowned textile artist Alice Kettle and is spread across Arnolfini’s three floors, revealing how textiles ‘remember’, how memory is ‘embedded within the process of making’ and how to create new narratives.

 

Alongside Threads, will be an exhibition showcasing the talents of refugee women who attend Arnolfini’s Women’s Craft Club as well as members of Bristol charity Bridges for Communities’ ‘Stitching Together’ refugee sewing group.

 

In addition, a programme of engagement activities from guest contributors will accompany the exhibition including family workshops, participating artworks, and interactive activities as well as talks, music, dance and film.

Celia Pym's Hope’s Sweater, 1951 (2011), photograph by Michele Panzeri

 

Threads: ‘Breathing Stories Into Materials’ opens at Arnolfini on Saturday 8 July, running until Sunday 1 October 2023. Find out more on the Arnolfini website.

 

Main Image: Olga de Amaral?, Viento 2 (2014), photograph by Theo Christelis

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Article by:

Stanley Gray

Stan is a born and bred Bristolian, recently graduated from studying English Literature in Sheffield. His passions are music and literature and he spends the majority of his time in venues all over the city, immersing himself in Bristol’s alternative music scene. A lifelong Bristol City fan, Stan’s Saturdays are spent watching his team both home and away.