British Textile Biennial 2025 opens
British Textile Biennial | Halloweenville in Warrington | Latest NW arts news
I was fully planning to tell you all about Halloweenville in Warrington in this introduction but Storm Amy meant that it was cancelled on Saturday. If a spooky underwater-themed walk with ghostly sea creatures, sunken secrets and skeleton pirates gives you the thrills rather than the chills, there are still tickets left.
Let’s go straight to the main event - the British Textile Biennial in East Lancashire that is everything I think a biennial ought to be: Ambitious, intelligent, relevant and deeply inspired by the place it is in.
High performance clothing was invented here - but you won’t need it for this journey of discovery
To get to the show about clothing worn by Himalayan and Antarctic explorers is a bit of an expedition in itself. You have to climb to the very top floor of Townley Hall, avoiding anything that might slow your progress along the way - like the door to the magnificent yellow ochre Great Hall or glass cases filled with treasures.
But it’s a journey far less arduous than those taken by the people who wore the garments featured in Pioneers of the Material World, just one of a programme of exhibitions that form this year’s British Textile Biennial across East Lancashire.
It’s a Biennial of discovery - of a landscape once patterned with thousands of textile mill chimneys, of art galleries and historic places you may not have visited before, of unexpected facts.
Let’s start with a fact: Did you know that clothes worn by Amelia Earhart, Luke Skywalker and Edmund Hillary were all made from performance fabric developed and woven in Lancashire? These extraordinary innovations, as well as their evolution into fashion items worn on football terraces and at raves, are explored in an exhibition that’s thrillingly retro and futuristic at the same time.
As well as outerwear - including a pair of late-1970s Tango orange Sprayway overtrousers, featuring a label naming the machinist, Azeem Khan - there are design sketches, fabric samples and photographs of people wearing the clothes. You get caught up in the sense of derring do until you’re confronted by a large black and white photograph of the Nepali sherpas on the 1939 Everest expedition, and the piles and piles of trunks they had to carry.
The theme of exploration that runs through British Textile Biennial’s curation is also there in its structure. It takes place across East Lancashire in galleries, historic buildings and spaces that are many miles apart. Rather than an inconvenience, this adds to the experience as you travel through the landscape and through the streets that are so much a part of this story. Artistic director Laurie Peake has put together a programme full of substance with layers upon layers of stories should you wish to discover them.
Over in Accrington, at Haworth Art Gallery, the historical innovations continue - this time looking at the development of synthetic fabrics made from fossil fuels that were once seen as our future and are now known to be detrimental to it. The Synthetic Revolution shows how compelling the argument for Terylene - made here in Accrington - must have been: Adverts boasting of science’s impact on everyday life and the transformation of housework, fashion shots of models wearing easy-care fibres in the Tate Gallery, scrapbooks of joyful, brightly-patterned fabric and a space age silver mini dress.
Also exhibited here are Ivan Forde’s intricate cyanotypes, created with high performance textiles made from plastic waste taken from the ocean. Appearing to glow like bioluminescent organisms, these hangings are both ethereal and strangely grounding - a reminder that the planet existed for billions of years before we arrived with our inventions and will manage well without us for billions more.
In Blackburn Cathedral Crypt, Lucy + Jorge Orta cross continents in their beautiful embroidery appliqué and video works that imagine a world so drastically altered by climate change that people return to nomadic ways of living. It’s a bleak vision but their art is anything but, richly detailed and welcoming.
Football (and non-football) fans will find Turton Tower fascinating. Inside this hotchpotch of different designs evolving over 600 years, is 100% UNOFFICIAL: The Fabric of Fandom, an exhibition exploring how fans have subverted textiles to express their individuality. It features the work of artists represented by OOF Gallery, which is located inside a Grade II-listed Georgian townhouse in the grounds of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Also here is Christian Jeffrey’s Comfort Ye One Another, a handmade, intricately hand-painted football shirt inspired by wallpaper in Turton Tower. Meanwhile Abäke & Le Cercele du S226erpent Bleu playfully imagine the kit and merchandise of a fictional football team lost to history.
There are many more exhibitions and artworks than can be mentioned here, or this piece would read like a listings. But others particularly worth visiting include Somali artists and producers Dhaqan Collective’s The Aqal (House of Weaving Songs) where you step inside a tent filled with the sound of songs sung by women weaving: Dhara Mehrotra’s Filamentous, magnifications of mycelum’s hidden structures at the Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery; and all of the works at Queen Street Mill - the world’s last surviving 19th century steam-powered fabric mill, which is now a heritage centre.
They include photographer Tim Smith’s images of current textile innovation, such as a company that makes braid for royal dress uniform using the same machines to create knee cartilage. It’s quite humbling to pause for a moment next to the silenced machines, where his pictures are hanging, and experience the past and the future in one glimpse.
British Textile Biennial runs until Sunday, November 2 in venues across East Lancashire.
See your work featured in Stored Honey
If you’re an artist, actor, theatre maker, curator, director or producer, I’d love to hear more about your work. You can submit details of an exhibition, performance or cultural event via this short form or send me an email to tostoredhoney@gmail.com. If you would like to take part in Stored Honey’s regular Meet the Artist feature, please answer the questions in this Q&A f
Latest arts news
🎫 A powerful new musical inspired by the Black British civil rights movement is at Salford’s Lowry from Thursday, October 16 to Saturday, October 18 as part of a UK tour. Black Power Desk by critically-acclaimed playwright Urielle Klein-Mekongo is set in 1970s London, at a time of political unrest and cultural transformation.
🔎 Midsomer Murders: The Killings at Badger’s Drift is touring to Storyhouse Chester from Tuesday, November 11 to Saturday, November 15. When well-loved spinster Emily Simpson is found dead in the picturesque village of Badger’s Drift, her friend Lucy Bellringer refuses to accept it was an accident. DCI Tom Barnaby and Sgt Gavin Troy are called in to investigate, uncovering a world of hidden passions, long-buried secrets and deadly rivalries.
🐝 FACT and Homotopia in Liverpool are planning a series of artistic and public interventions to mark Remember Nature: Day of Action on Tuesday, November 4. They include The Pansy Project walking tour led by artist Paul Harfleet who has spent two decades plating pansies at sites of homophobic abuse worldwide. See the full programme.
In case you missed it
Opening this week
The social and cultural power of hair is being explored in a new photographic display in the Museum of Liverpool’s Skylight Gallery. From the iconic mop tops made famous by The Beatles to the unmistakable ‘curly blows’ that have defined the scouse look in more recent times, Curly Blows, Cuts and Curlers explores the connections between hair salons, identity and community. It features the work of renowned photographers including Alex Hurst, Abdullah Badwi, Paul Trevor and The Caravan Gallery.
Thank you for reading the 148th edition of Stored Honey. If you enjoyed what you read then please hit the ❤️ button as it helps to get it shown more widely.
I’m off now to stick my British Textile Biennial postcards on the wall. In the meantime, you can submit details of an exhibition, performance or cultural event via this short form or send me an email to tostoredhoney@gmail.com. If you would like to take part in Stored Honey’s regular Meet the Artist feature, answer the questions in this Q&A form.
Have a great week,
Laura
P.S. Liverpool museums gain former Tate leader as chair
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