Collateral, was a site-based, participatory work for Queen Street Mill in Burnley, Lancashire. Commissioned by Super Slow Way for British Textile Biennial 2021, the work commemorates the hundreds of workers who die because they work in factories and sweatshops that supply the global garment industry. It is inspired by, and takes its form from, a lacework panel commemorating the Battle of Britain, held in the textile collection at Gawthorpe Hall, Burnley.  Working with local embroiderers and the participation of over 120 people from across the UK, this textile work was reimagined as a new hand-embroidered whitework panel, 450 x 163 cms in size. This new panel substitutes for images of ruined and burning buildings on the Battle of Britain lacework stitched images of burning factories and the dead laid out in front of them. It changes aircraft for shipping routes and St.Paul’s cathedral on fire becomes Rana Plaza collapsed. Around the edges of the panel a border of wheatsheafs  is replaced by a border of enfolded bodies, each one stitched by a different person.

All these components, and more, come together to ‘re-member’ the disconnections and wilful negligence by which such a horrific devaluing of life comes to underpin the clothing we buy and wear and to remember those who are ignored and forgotten in consumer capitalism’s rapacious, ongoing race to the bottom.

Collateral manifests an alternative scenario of responsibility and reflection. In doing so, its commitment to the dead is literally realised through the commitment of time, labour and care given by the living.

Collateral has grown from my project N scale in which 188 workers who died in a Kader Industrial factory fire in Thailand in 1993 are remembered. In this new project the victims of other major garment factory fires and collapses are remembered. Accompanying this embroidered memorial is a videowork in which extracts from an interview with Rasamee Supaem, a survivor of the Kader fire, are brought together with a music generated on-site by broken-folk duo Lunatraktors.

Lunatraktors (Clair Le Couteur and Carli Jefferson) came to Queen Street Mill and improvised overtone singing, body percussion and clogging in the mill loom shed. This recorded material became the basis of the Collateral video soundtrack. An extract from the video that accompanied the installation is below.

Lunatraktors improvising at Queen Street Mill, 2021. (Camera: Jasmine Johnson, Editing: Brigid McLeer)

Collateral has subsequently been shown in slightly reconfigured formats at the Crafts Council gallery, London as part of the group exhibition Cotton: Land, Labour and Body curated by Uthra Rajgopal (2022)

I also included it in my recent solo survey exhibition Cosmus at Limerick City Gallery of Art.

With thanks to all the participants and collaborators who helped to create Collateral

Embroidery Leads: Rabia Sharif and Bev Lamey

Embroidery volunteers: panel embroidery: Tracey Garvey  Regina Arkwright  Glennis Hulme  Patricia Barrett  Selina Pearce  Melanie Yates

Additional panel embrodiery: Sue Towers  Parveen Aktar  Sara Spencer  Val Coleshaw  Sameira Amir  Sue Prestbury  Ann Salisbury  Anne Alderson  Albia Begum  Lubia Begum  Anita Heather  Azmat Illyas

Design and drawing collaborators: Kai Edwards  Katie Tillyer  Lilly Beards  Yvonne Mullaney

Special thanks to: Rasamee Supaem (Kader Fire survivor; interviewed by the artist, Bangkok, Thailand, 2018)

Thai-English Translation: Petnoi Petsophonsakul

And thanks to the embroiderers all over the UK and abroad who created and shared the embroidery pieces that make up the border of Collateral

Annie O’Neill  Sarah Williams  Rachel Gilliard Jones  Kathryn Hollingsworth  Alex Lowman  Julia Palfreeman  Laura Ogilvie  Christine Dumbleton  Sue Reeve  Tamzin Birchall  Cal Boal  Julia Crook  Anne Amosford

Debra Taylor  Debbie Bell  Joanna Eyden  Ellie Taylor  Nina Gross  Phillipa White  Dot Griew  Jodie Ruffle  Janice Webb  Patti Taylor  Catherine Hill  Jill Blanchette  Maria Walker  Maggie Williams  Kate Ryan  Susan Sales

Christine Johnston  Liz Hewitt  Judith Williamson  Rowan Bridgewood  Helen Gaskell  Meg Gurney  Elaine Loader  Wendy Mayer  Kerry Kosak  Jenny Unsworth  Dee Williams  Jackie Losson  Pauline Read  Anne Shaw

Sylvan Davies  Linda Ufton  Rebecca Mitchell  Amanda Lawton  Heather Miller  Laura Pearse  Sue McBride  Emma McGowen  Dee Weaver  Diane Knight  Ashokashri Norman  Ann Hodgson  Ellen Evans  Jo Gelsthorpe

Heather Watson  Bernie Velvick  Barbara Littlewood