Another Peace is a site-specific installation, which explores the shared histories of cotton manufacture in Lancashire and Gujarat (and takes its title from the name of the Steam engine at Queen St. Mill, Peace).

The installation is the outcome of MIRIAD research undertaken within the Cotton Exchange project, which examined the social, cultural and historical legacies of cotton manufacture and trade in North West England and North West India.

Cotton Exchange operated within the context of a larger collaborative project, Global Threads, one of the strands of the Cultural Olympiad project Stories of the World.

The award of an AFL* residency within Cotton Exchange enabled me to undertake a research visit to Ahmedabad, to gain insights into the decline of the cotton textile industry in Gujarat, and examine the parallels with Lancashire. This was followed up by research within the archives of Lancashire Museums, specifically Queen St. Mill in Burnley.

Another peace builds on collaborative research methods developed in earlier projects (e.g. Translating Tradition, 2010).

A series of over-long shirt-forms were commissioned from specialist tailors in Gujarat and Lancashire, and made from fabrics sourced in India, bearing the commercial stamps and printed labels that document their manufacture and trade. These shirt-forms were interspersed between the weaving loom ‘heels’ hanging from the ceiling of the spinning shed at Queen St. Mill. The translucent and ghost-like shirt-forms embodied ‘memories’ of garments worn by the cotton mill workers of Ahmedabad and Burnley, emphasising the absence of human presence in the contemporary textile mill environment, common to both Lancashire and Gujarat.

The work was installed in the strategic location of Queen St. Mill Museum, Burnley (June- September 2012).  AFL is looking at the possibility of the installation being shown in an equivalent Textile Mill setting in India in 2013.

* A Fine Line, project co-ordinators, in partnership with ACE Renaissance Project.