Fabric: Touch and Identity

This exhibition at Compton Verney Museum is developed from the 3 year research project ‘The Erotic Cloth’ undertaken by Professor Lesley Millar (University for the Creative Arts) and Professor Alice Kettle (Manchester Metropolitan University), the first outcome of which has been the book The Erotic Cloth published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2018. Our argument in the book was concerned with the possibilities of cloth as a membrane through which we might experience the erotic and this exhibition will develop the theoretical discourse of the book through actual cloth as art and in art. Drawing on works from Compton Verney’s collection, as well as pieces by historic and contemporary artists, designers and makers, the exhibition will consider the varied uses of cloth as an expression of personal identity; through sexual identity, gender identity and otherness. Within the exhibition the works - like cloth itself - will flow and embrace many of the identified threads of connection between cloth and skin, making particular reference to the ways in which cloth often performs unspoken aspects of intimacy, pleasure, sensuality, love and tenderness. Of primary importance in the selection of the work has been the dialogue present in the work between the cloth, the body and the space between the cloth and skin