Crafting Resistance: An Evening with Common Threads Press
Tuesday 6 May, 6.30-8.15pm
Join Common Threads Press for a panel discussion on craft as a source of hope and survival. This panel will approach craft from the perspective of three of its authors who work with a diverse range of craft histories, chaired by Laura Moseley, Common Threads Press founder and Assistant Curator of the Women’s Art Collection.
Speakers include Gill Crawshaw (Rights Not Charity: Protest Textiles and Disability Activism, 2023) and Rachel Dedman (Stitching the Intifada: Embroidery and Resistance in Palestine, 2024).
About the Speakers
Gill Crawshaw
Crawshaw is a curator who draws on her experience of disability activism to organise art exhibitions and events which highlight issues affecting disabled people. Crawshaw has curated exhibitions which have addressed representation of disabled artists (Possible All Along), charity (Piss on Pity), cuts to welfare and public spending (Shoddy) and access (The Reality of Small Differences). Crawshaw is interested in the intersection of disabled people’s lives with textile heritage in the north of England, as well as with contemporary textile arts. At the time of publication, Crawshaw is organising an exhibition that is part of Leeds 2023 Year of Culture. In Any work that wanted doing, disabled artists are invited to respond to Crawshaw’s research into disabled people who worked in textile mills.
Rachel Dedman
Dedman is a curator, writer, and art historian. Her work examines the material and political lives of things, and challenges established narratives around cultural production in the Global South. Since 2019, Dedman has been the Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East at the V&A, London, where she curates the triennial Jameel Prize exhibition and the Jameel Fellowship artist residency programme. Beyond the V&A, Rachel curated Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery for Kettle’s Yard and The Whitworth, UK, in 2023/24, and was co-curator of the State of Fashion Biennale 2024: Ties that Bind in Arnhem, the Netherlands.
Jess White
White is a culture writer based in Liverpool, who focuses on books, film and costume. Her work has featured in the Guardian, Dazed, i-D, the Faber Journal and The Irish Times, among others. She has recently completed a PhD which explores representations of textile labour and its products in nineteenth-century literature.
Laura Moseley
Moseley is the Founder of Common Threads Press and the Assistant Curator of the Women’s Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.
About Common Threads Press
Founded in 2019 by Laura Moseley, Common Threads Press is a small, independent publisher of books and zines that uplift histories of creative work.
Our publications are written and developed in close collaboration with academics and artists alike, from all around the world, who share our deep love and critical interest in craft histories.
We are inspired by and indebted to the rich history of independent, grassroots publishing that centres voices from the margins — spotlighting the political and cultural relevance of crafts that has long been overlooked or dismissed in mainstream publishing.
Here is a Gale Warning: Art, Crisis & Survival
This exhibition presents eight contemporary artists whose works offer vantage points on a world in perpetual crisis. Rather than representing specific political events, or taking singular positions, each artist in this exhibition explores broader conditions of domination and conflict, as well as horizons for survival.
Here is a Gale Warning will feature works by Pia Arke, Justin Caguiat, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Candace Hill-Montgomery, Tomashi Jackson, Tarek Lakhrissi, Anne Tallentire, and Cecilia Vicuña.
Access
- The galleries, where exhibitions are shown, and all areas of the Clore Learning Studio (level -1), the Research Space (level 1) and the Ede Room (level 2) are fully accessible.
- We have wheelchair accessible toilets on the lower ground (level -1), ground and first floor (level 1).
- There is a lift giving access to all floors located past the galleries, just beside the Clore Learning Studio on the ground floor.
- Kettle’s Yard welcomes assistance and service dogs in all areas.
- We have large-print versions of the wall text available.
- We can lend visitors small folding seats for taking around exhibitions or using at non-seated events. Please ask a Visitor Assistant for help finding a seat.
