Art / News
Bristol gallery to be transformed into ‘living textile studio’
Arnolfini has announced it is launching a “living, breathing textile studio” for the community.
The ambitious new space is being funded by the gallery’s first ever crowdfunding campaign, which aims to reach £20,000 over the month of April.
The new studio aims to celebrate textiles as an art form that creates important connections across cultures, and will include a gigantic weaving machine which visitors can use and a new space for making and telling stories through textiles.
is needed now More than ever
The space will also support Arnolfini’s resident Women’s Craft Club, made up of refugee and asylum communities, to work with exhibiting artists and share their traditions and skills with visitors.
Birmingham-based artist Faraw Moledina has also been commissioned to create a Majlis (the Arabic term for a seated room for people to gather), to create a space using her bespoke textile patterns.
Visitors will be able to spend time in the space and add their own stories to the work through embroidery.
The summer-long engagement programme will coincide with Arnolfini’s major exhibition of textiles, Threads, running from July 8 to October 1.
The exhibition will feature work from twenty-one contemporary international and intergenerational artists, co-curated by leading textile artist Alice Kettle.
The project is being funded by a crowdfunding campaign through Art Happens with Art Fund.
Donors will have the chance to receive exclusive rewards, from a limited edition tote bag and sew-on fabric patches, to hand-embroidered cushions and a visit to artist Will Cruickshank’s rural south Devon studio.
You can donate to the crowdfunder here.
Main photo: Alice Hendry
Read next:
- Saffron Records launches ‘urgent’ crowdfunder
- Meet the artist behind the UK’s first aboriginal-owned gallery
- The People’s Art Fair returns to Stokes Croft
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