York textile artist- at Sunny Bank Mills exhibition in Leeds

Ealish Wilson is currently exhibiting her work at the Sunny Bank Mills Gallery in Farsley, near Leeds.

Ealish is a member of the renowned textile artist collective, the 62 Group, whose new exhibition Tailored runs at Sunny Bank Mills (SBM) until July 2.

Tailored celebrates textiles and their place in the local community and economy as part of the celebration of 10 years of arts and culture at Sunny Bank Mills.

Some of the work on display (Image: SBM)

Ealish said: “I have been a member of the 62 Group since 2018. This year myself and Dr Claire Barber have taken on the exhibition role for the group and Tailored is our first collaborative curation.

“Sunny Bank Mills, one of the oldest and most famous family-owned textile mills in Yorkshire, is the most wonderful venue for our exhibition. The group’s response to the theme “tailored” is diverse and intriguing and the Mill provides a fabulous backdrop for everyone’s work.

“On a more personal level, I am inspired everyday by colour, texture, and form. Architecture is my primary reference point. I use it for proportion of scale, combinations of materials and shapes. Incredible design, traditional and contemporary, is freely available for inspiration everywhere. I use a technique called smocking to create many of my pieces. Traditionally found on dresses I scale it up to give a sculptural quality to my work.

“I have two works in Tailored. The first is Pin Bone, a digital print on Twill with hand smocking. This work is made up of over 5,000 hand stitches (this is how many stitches it takes to create a suit by hand).

“I was inspired by the Sunny Bank Mills archive, which revealed that Herringbone-woven fabrics historically were designed after looking at the pin bones of a fish. I created a Herringbone print from a photo of pins and hand smocked over 4.5 metres of the cloth to create the work.

“The second is Macro Weave, a digital print on Twill with hand smocking. This piece derived from looking at different weave structures and their formations. I wondered if I could use a different smocking technique to convey a weave, but in a scaled-up version. I chose a lattice smock to create the structure I required; hand stitching and gathering the cloth into the appearance of a weave."

A detail from the work (Image: SBM)

Ealish studied for a BA at Chester College with the incredible textile artist Professor Maxine Bristow who changed how she viewed textiles and making. Her MA is from the Scottish College of Textiles, based at an old mill with extremely knowledgeable technicians.

Jane Kay, Creative Director at Sunny Bank Mills, said: “This exhibition is particularly relevant to Sunny Bank as Tailored is a word we most associate with suits – and suits were the most common use of the cloth at the mill. The depth and breadth of textile art as a medium in this exhibition is astonishing.”

For further information about this exhibition, please visit www.sunnybankmills.co.uk

The exhibition in situ (Image: SBM)