Social Fabric exhibition

19 Jan-10 Mar 2012

Overview

Textiles are used to explore colonial history labour, capital, international trade and radical politics. In the 19th Century Karl Marx's account of the cotton industry tracked fifty years of boom and bust and the effects this had on workers in Britain and its colonies (and in particular India). Social Fabric cross references different accounts of textile history, focusing on works by two contemporary artists Sudhir Patwardhan and Alice Creischer, presented alongside extensive range of recent and historical archival material, including Company Paintings, Indian Chintz, original journals from Marx, films, photographs, newspaper articles and recordings of mill workers' testimonies.