I'm doing an artist talk in Bristol! LGBT+ Liberation & the Politics of Textiles

Hello!

I'm doing an artist talk in Bristol which is pretty exciting. I'm going to be discussing the Same Sex Marriage Quilt which is on display at the Bowers Gallery in Bristol. For those who have followed this blog a little while will know I did this project back in 2015 so its great to have it back out on display and talk about the work. If you want to know more click on the labels textiles or equality quilt and you'll see my previous posts about the project

If you don't know about the project here is a little more detail about it. If you're local to Bristol please come a long and say I would would love to meet you!

A community quilt project which celebrates the 396 Members of Parliament (MPs) that voted in favour of same sex marriage bill 2013. The quilt is a political map with all 650 MPs constituencies.  He has been working with a range of venues and groups to get the public involved in the project. These include People's History Museum, LGBT Youth North West, Museum of Liverpool, FACT, The 1st National Festival of LGBT History, Homotopia, Unity Theatre and Schools Out. 

I worked with different groups to get the public to decorate hand drawn portraits of the 396 MPs that voted in support of the same sex marriage bill. The portraits have been collected together to form a political map of the UK and all the MPs constituencies. There were also 254 MPs that did not vote for the bill, for those gaps in the map people were asked to write messages of hope towards a more equal and accepting future.  

The project was made possible through successfully competing against 12 finalists for one of three mirco-residencies with People's History Museum in 2014. The project continued being supported through Homotopia's artist development scheme Queercore. During Homtopia’s 2014 Festival Unity theatre and Museum of Liverpool hosted sessions for the public to decorate the hand drawn images. The project engaged with community groups until all 396 contributions were decorated. From design to construction the project took two years to create. The quilt is 4 metres tall by 3.5 metres wide and was constructed with the support of Digetex and Source Unknown.