Man-Made Re-Made

This project was created by Kate Goldsworthy from a commission to celebrate 60 years of the Man-Made Fibres department in Leeds, and was supported by Arts Council England. Alongside a site-specific work in the main gallery, she developed an animated website with futures studio Franklin Till, in order to demystify material origins and change mindsets relating to their sustainability credentials.

The work was launched on May 25th 2017 in the Parkinson Building at the final event in the Yorkshire Year of the Textile programme, focusing on creativity, innovation and new research. Kate’s key commission was opened to the public with an inaugural reading of Rommi Smith’s specially-commissioned poem, Woman-Made & Re-Made. Kate and Rommi collaborated to commemorate Mitzi Cunliffe’s life and work, responding to her monumental sculpture Man-Made Fibres (1956), sited above the Clothworkers South building.

While Kate's panel installation and interactive website considers the life cycles of materials, based on research into sustainability and design, poet Rommi Smith was inspired by phenomenological ideas of making the self through the process of making art.