Spinning a historic yarn
By Daniel Nelson
Image by Alke Schmidt/ William Morris Gallery
Detail from Ghost, by Alke Schmidt
And yes, the brutality of Tangled Yarns is a perfect fit for the William Morris Gallery, a hushed, restrained, beautifully manicured Georgian building dedicated to the romantic and folk-inspired Arts & Crafts movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
It fits because Morris abhorred industrial mass production as a function of capitalism, and artist Alke Schmidt also takes aim at a system that fuelled cotton plantation slavery in the US; deadly factory fires and collapses in Bangladesh that show greedy a disregard for workers’ lives; forced labour in Uzbekistan; and physical attacks on British ‘calico madams’ wearing imported Indian clothes.
There’s a positive side, too, with a work inspired by a visit to Vietnam (“…reminds us that safe and decent jobs in the textile industry can empower women [and men] in the countries that now make our clothes”); a home-made early 20th century patchwork titled ‘Deeds Not Words’, a popular suffragette banner slogan “that calls on us to bring about real change in the textile industry – whether as regulators, traders, industry, retailers, worker representatives or consumers”; and a moving piece commemorating Mahatma Gandhi’s 1931 visit to Lancashire to explain to cotton mill workers why he wanted a boycott of English cottons in India (“They treated me as one of their own. I shall never forget that”).
It’s a small show that packs a punch, and is a brilliant starting point for discussions about fashion, history, art, politics, gender, colonialism, consumerism, corporate responsibilities, and Britain’s - and Britons’ - links with the world.
· Tangled Yarns, work by Alke Schmidt, free, is at the William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow, E17, until 25 January. Info: 8496/ www.wmgallery.org.uk
+ 8 January, Alke Schmidt discusses how the social costs of the global textile industry inspired her exhibition, 7.30pm
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