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Caroline Broadhead New Work

13 October to 11 November 2006

In recent years Caroline Broadhead has become increasingly concerned with a sense of place and the emotive charge of memory. The resulting works have included a number of site-specific installations such as the major commission Breathing Space (2005) for York Museums Trust, where her redefinition of the interior space of York St Mary‘s, a deconsecrated medieval church, was both powerfully resonant and moving.

A significant feature of Broadhead‘s work is its near-intangibility; there is frequently a feeling that something is barely there, or the sense of being at a threshold or otherwise in-between. Among her current interests are windows dressed by net curtains. As she observes: ‘We only notice glass if it’s dirty or damaged. It‘s an invisible layer we look through, rather than look at’, but ‘... the screening or filtering qualities of the curtains creates a division ... by interrupting the gaze at a certain point’.

In this exhibition a vast wall-piece made up of mirrored shapes recreates the blown-up, pixellated pattern of a net curtain. We seem able to look at it and then to look through it to an image beyond. At the same time its uncustomary scale makes us feel curiously diminished. Net curtains came into being when lace began to be made by machine in Nottingham in the mid 19 century and Broadhead enjoys the idea that in contemporary machine-made lace the traditional hand-made patterns still cling on. She compares this to the way we still cling on to a notion of privacy (one which in British society has been traditionally provided by ‘nets’) but in a world where we are now, in reality, increasingly under surveillance.

Biographical notes

Caroline Broadhead trained at the Central School of Art & Design (1969 ­ 72) and has since developed a multi-disciplinary practice and international profile. Her work is represented in major public collections in the UK, Europe, USA, Australia and Japan. She was winner of the Jerwood Prize for Applied Arts: Textiles in 1997 and the Textiles International Open in 2004. Her site-specific installation, Breathing Space was the inaugural commission for York Museums Trust‘s new visual arts space at York St Mary‘s in 2005 and a solo exhibition of her work entitled Away was held at the Mission Gallery, Swansea and Leeds Metropolitan University Gallery in 2003. Recent group exhibitions include Fashion & Anti-Fashion at the Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco and Body Extensions at Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Lausanne. Recent collaborations with choreographer Angela Woodhouse include Edge (2006), London College of Fashion, Dreams and Ruins (2005), Witley Court, Worcestershire and Threshold (2004), The Place Theatre, London, a piece which was shortlisted for the Place Prize. In the summer of 2006 she was an Artist in Residence at the Pilchuck Glass School, Seattle. She is Reader in Jewellery and Textiles at Middlesex University.



For more information, transparencies, or to arrange an interview with the artist please contact

Juliana Barrett

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