Ilkley Manor House will host a new exhibition this November that spotlights the intimacy and resonance of textile art.
Songs of Cloth runs 1–16 November 2025 (weekends, 11am–4pm) as part of OUR TURN, Bradford’s first visual arts festival.
Bringing together five artists — Hannah Lamb, Annie Fforde, Sarah Gamble, Pippa Hamilton and Lorna Jewitt — the show invites visitors to slow down and look closely. Through stitch, dye, imprint and surface, the works explore how cloth can hold memory, carry personal histories and speak to the ways we live with materials every day.
Curator Andreea Chitan said:
“In Songs of Cloth, the material becomes memory; cloth becomes archive. These works carry the traces of hands, histories and shared making. Textiles offer an intimate way of speaking about what is felt rather than seen. We hope visitors will pause, reflect and witness the stories held in each stitch.”
A centrepiece of the exhibition is Fabric of Memory by Annie Fforde, premiering as an OUR TURN festival commission. Working across traditional and experimental printing, Fforde layers fabric, texture and colour to evoke how memories are stored, altered and recalled in the folds of cloth.
Hannah Lamb contributes a suite of reflective works that map the intersections of domestic making, inherited knowledge and global histories of textiles.
In a collaborative thread titled DRIFT, Sarah Gamble, Pippa Hamilton and Lorna Jewitt pass works between hands, each responding in turn. The results move from delicate, minute stitching to richly layered textiles that carry multiple voices. Alongside DRIFT sit individual pieces by each artist, interweaving personal histories, landscape, archival material and the natural world across fabric and paper.
Songs of Cloth is curated by Andreea Chitan, a visual artist and curator whose practice brings together material heritage, craft, memory and identity. The exhibition forms part of OUR TURN, a programme designed and led by artists, delivered through South Square Centre in collaboration with Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, Yorkshire Contemporary and Bradford Producing Hub, with support from Arts Council England and Yorkshire and Humber Visual Arts Network.
Whether you’re a textile enthusiast or simply curious about how materials can carry stories, Songs of Cloth offers a thoughtful, beautifully paced experience — the kind that rewards unhurried looking and invites you to feel what can’t always be seen.
The launch is on Friday 31 October from 5:30pm. The exhibition can then be viewed weekends until 16 November. Ilkley Manor House is open Saturday and Sunday 11am-4pm and entry is free.
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