Textile and Memory [Multi-component output]

Mullaniff’s multi-component project consists of ten drawings, one christening gown, and three digital embroidery works. It was disseminated through a series of workshops, an exhibition (Loom Room, Dick Institute, 2019) with accompanying photographic essay/catalogue, a conference paper, and an essay in K. Deepwell’s Feminist Art Activisms and Activisms (Valiz, 2020). Mullaniff’s research contributes to the study of hidden craft-based histories, as evidenced in Garland (2015), her earlier site-specific exhibition held in the lace mill, MYB Textiles, Ayrshire, which drew its inspiration from John Styles’ research on family histories through textiles in Threads of Feeling (Foundling Museum, 2010-11). She worked with the Textile Team at Dean Castle for two years to record and re-evaluate traditions in the locality of Ayrshire in and through her own work, using embroidery, digital printing, photography and drawing techniques. The research focused on identifying and developing the craft skills of local women volunteers in conservation at Dean Castle, recording inter-generational reflections on textiles and their associations, and developing skills and knowledges into a socially engaged research project, as well as a body of work produced by the artist. Textile and Memory re-examines whitework embroidery, an intangible cultural heritage specific to Ayrshire, which became a global centre for this technique in the late 18th Century. Mullaniff’s own work is centred on a productive exchange between textile design and fine art; using print, pattern and techniques from historical archives as a resource in the reclamation of cultural memory and histories of textiles. In addition to drawings of the process and digital prints, a key output was the production of a christening gown, redeploying her own embroidery motifs from whitework into digital print on silk. This project was co-produced with Emma Dick whose artistic contributions to the research emerged in poetry.

A multi-component output that includes:
(1) Mullaniff, Kathleen (2019) Digital embroidery: Dean Castle. [Artefact]
(2) Mullaniff, Kathleen (2019) Drawings: Dean Castle Textile studio. [Artefact]
(3) Mullaniff, Kathleen and Mullaniff, Pauline (2019) Textile and Memory. [Artefact]: Contemporary interpretation of Ayrshire whitework christening gown in silk and pencil drawings, designed and made by Pauline Mullaniff with digital print based repeat pattern based on original drawings by Kathleen Mullaniff.

Venue Details

Textile & Memory
Location: The Loom Room, The Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, KA1 3BU
Dates: 01 Jul 2019 - 01 Jul 2020 - postponed to 01 Dec 2019

Dean Castle Textile Studio
Location: Dick Institute, Kilmarnock
Dates: 2019

Dean Castle Textile Studio and Museum
Location: Dick Institute, Kilmarnock
Dates: 2019

Exhibition catalogue ISBN: 9781911371779