Narrative threads: textiles, art and history

In the course of the research I did for my book,Cycling and Cinema, one of the most interesting sources I came across was the 1895 volumeA Wheel within a Wheel, by American academic, teacher and campaigner, Frances A Willard. As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, inspired by artist Tom Phillips’ expansive bookwork,A Humument, I’ve been drawing and painting over pages from Willard’s book, using as source material some of the film stills, photographs, paintings, magazines I gathered while writingCycling and Cinema.

Earlier this year my friend and cycling partner James Fox, who was commissioned to produce an exhibition for the British Textile Biennial, invited me to exhibit some of the treated pages alongside his work. The Biennial opened on Friday scattered across different sites in East Lancashire mill-towns, and so yesterday I travelled over to see some of the exhibits…