Hannah Lamb has a deep fascination with the structure and surface of cloth, its tactile properties and its deeper meanings. In her recent book ‘Poetic Cloth’, she describes how the properties of different materials can hold deeper resonance and tap into our cultural and personal understanding of textiles;
“Materials speak to us if we choose to listen. They speak of touch, memory and place. For me, cloth has the ability to describe what is difficult to put into words – it is poetic.”
In this exhibition Hannah explores how textiles can communicate ideas and emotions. Her large-scale installation work ‘[De]Constructed Cloth’ aims to capture elements of the West-Yorkshire textile industry, which is so important in shaping the area around her home town of Bradford. Cyanotype ‘blueprints’ taken from unpicked quilt sections, appear and disappear as traces of the heritage of cloth manufacture.
On a more intimate scale, smaller pieces act as more personal and emotional responses to the artist’s place in the world. In these works, simple hand stitch becomes a personal act of care and a meditation on material. Hannah explores the theme of care, both for herself and others, and asks: ‘When is a duty of care not enough?’.
Hannah’s work is typified by a sensitive use of materials, often choosing to work with old, worn and re-worked fabrics, selected for their softness or subtle irregularities. Deconstructing and unpicking these old fabrics can be a way of learning about the materials construction and its former lives. Hannah also works with simple hand stitch, patching and appliqué as ways of repairing and altering the surface, creating new narratives in conversation with the cloth.