The William Morris Gallery is very canny
at showing contemporary artists whose output would have been looked upon most
favourably by Morris himself. None more so than the latest exhibition by Alke Schmidt, Tangled Yarns. If Morris was
alive today I'm sure he would have felt as passionately about Alke's call for
social justice through her exposure of the murky world of the textile industry
as about her highly skilled handicraft.
Alke plays up this dichotomy between
Morris the socialist and Morris the designer in her exhibition. One of the
first works which the audience is confronted with as they ascend the stairs to
the main exhibition space is entitled Morris's
Dilemma. "Confronted" is perhaps an apt word; rising like steam
from the two arms of a mill engine, Morris's Honeysuckle
and Tulip pattern, repeated
on a grand scale, weaves like a mirage in and out of the engine painted over
it. I'm not sure whether the work should be classified as a painting or as a
collaboration with a bygone craftsman. It could easily be an assault on the
senses, but Alke blends pattern and painting so seamlessly, confronting
Morris's romantic longing for a pre-industrial, hand-crafted age with the means
of production that made his career possible.
One cylinder of the mill engine is
entitled "CAPITAL"; the other, "LABOUR". On Alke's blog we learn that
this is not her own invention intended to "illustrate
the complex and conflicted relationship between Morris the
entrepreneur-designer and Morris the socialist", but an unbelievably
fortuitous discovery on her part; such an Orwellian mill engine may genuinely
have existed. At the very least, it did as a Victorian illustration.
The composition and colouring of Alke's
piece is redolent of both right and left wing propaganda for me, but
particularly trade union, socialist, and suffrage banners.
In the very last piece completed for Tangled Yarns, Alke pays
direct homage to these suffrage banners, appliquéing an early 20th century patchwork (which
would have been a "contemporary" of the Suffragettes) with the
Suffragette rallying cry and banner proclamation Deeds Not Words.
Though the work harks back to the 1900s
and the suffrage movement, and is in part a collaboration with a needlewoman of
the past, it feels decidedly modern. It could be the jumble of colours, which
are warm, inviting, even cosy; in marked contrast to the rest of the exhibition
there is a sense of the handcrafted here that is perhaps not entirely polished;
this is highlighted by the unfinished, raw edges of the patchwork. Alke posits
on her blog that the woman who created the patchwork may have
been a professional machinist making this piece at home for personal pleasure;
she was certainly a skilled stitcher.
Alke's choice to leave the patchwork
unfinished signifies the never-ending nature of "women's work", and
lends the piece a vulnerable air. The domestic furnishing and dressmaking
cottons used for the lettering, the shirting stripes of the patchwork, show
that craft is for everyone, and can be (and certainly was in the past) a part
of everyday life. Just as Morris would have wanted.
The phrase which keeps repeating in my
head as I look at this work is the old rallying cry of Second-wave feminism,
"The Personal Is Political". Its execution puts me in mind of
Craftivism, as does its simple, yet impactful and perennial message. It has readopted
the Suffragette call to arms, but divorced it from its austerity. As with the
campaigns of the Craftivist Collective,
"unlike some of the more traditional, extrovert forms of
activism", Deeds Not Words is
quietly beautiful.
Alke created
her text from fabrics used in the other works in the exhibition - thereby tying
up the loose ends of her Tangled Yarns. A fitting conclusion
to Alke's exhibition, calling us to bring about real change in the textile
industry, whilst honouring the women who intersect with it.
A group of
women whose lives were utterly transformed - for worse - by the textile industry were the victims of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh. Disaster makes it sound like an accident;
textiles workers in the Rana Plaza building were literally told "If you
die here, so be it. But you can't leave, get to work".
The building
collapse is considered the deadliest structural failure in modern human
history, leaving behind countless unanswered questions. Due to failures at
every level, from highstreet brands whose clothes were manufactured in the
building neglecting to take responsibility towards their workers, to local
government turning a blind eye to the lack of planning permission, to managers
at one of the factories in the building threatening to withhold a month's pay
if workers refused to come to work following structural cracks appearing, 1138
(and counting) people have died. The majority of these workers were women, and
a number of their children were also killed in the collapse.
Just writing these words makes me angry.
It is incredible, therefore, that Alke has created such touching, peaceful, and
appropriate memorials to these women in her exhibition, restoring them the
dignity that they were so brutally robbed of.
In each of her two works commemorating the
workers who were killed, she uses 1138 pearlescent-tipped sewing pins - one for
each victim who died. Alke therefore honours the work that they did as
seamstresses, though it was not respected during their lifetimes.
1138 and Counting presents the pins on a scroll of cotton
and muslin, grouped together like a tally. The pure yet warm off-white is
peaceful and spiritual, and together with the ethereal muslin is reminiscent of
ghosts and angels.
Memorial presents us with a shroud-like length of
cotton (the fabric which ties the entire exhibition together) on which pins
delineate the shape of a woman's body. Although the pins pierce the fabric, the
body appears to be resting on it; this calls to mind the stories of volunteer
rescuers bringing victims out of the wreckage of Rana Plaza on bolts of fabric.
Alke has incorporated the survivors'
testimony into both pieces:
They would not pay us if we didn't work
that day.
One supervisor forced us to go inside.
We tried to get out but they wouldn't let
us.
Our managers said, 'We will all die some
day'.
If you die here, so be it. But you can't
leave, get to work.
My hand got stuck when the roof came down.
So I tried to cut off my hand but I couldn't.
I was buried alive. I never thought I'd
see sunlight again.
I can't work anymore. I can't support my
family, can't afford my treatment.
They didn't even pay my kids' due salaries. They said there is no salary for
the dead.
Alke's neighbours transcribed this
testimony from videos published by Labour Behind the Label into Bengali script, a further example
of her collaborative process. Alke transferred the script on to the cotton of
the works. In 1138 and
Counting, the script rises from behind a haze of muslin, reminding us, like Morris's Dilemma, that the
chain of supply in the textile industry is obscure and murky.
