Artwork brings textile mill's history to life

The top floor of a Victorian mill has been transformed into an art installation by a renowned American artist for Bradford 2025.

The work by Ann Hamilton at Salts Mill in Saltaire is inspired by the city's textile heritage and includes wool fabrics made by local firms H Dawson and William Halstead.

The artwork also includes a specially created composition including music by children from local schools, community groups and award winning whistler and vocalist Emily Eagen.

Ms Hamilton said she began the project by responding to the "space and feel" of the mill.

She said: "One makes work to be outside oneself. It begins by responding to the space and the feel of entering the welcome and the beauty as you enter Salts Mill.

"You have to imagine that the space was once filled with the deafening roar of machinery. Now it's filled with this lyrical revolving sound that hits the wall and returns with the light."

The work, called We Will Sing, spans three rooms in the top floor of the mill, with hanging fabrics, visual images, sound and film.

The installation is Hamilton's largest solo UK installation to date and includes a specially made film created by Bradford-based filmmaker Ali Lycett.

The piece includes wool made in Salts Mill by H Dawson, and textiles from William Halstead, which operates at nearby Stanley Mills.

Ms Hamilton said she had used the fabric as a reminder of the mill's historic past.

She said: "The way it hangs on the architecture uses the structure, comes down, is knotted and tethered by a stone with a hook in it.

"That is a reference to the first warp weighted loom, so it's not literally a loom but it's an origin form for one of the processes that would have taken place in that room."

Hamilton said the music - which includes compositions from students at Heaton St Barnabas Primary School and Titus Salt School - was the first "touch" viewers would experience in the installation.

She said: "The deep structure of all this work is tactility and sound is vibration and is the first form of touch.

"So you have a material centre, which is felt and cloth and paper, and things you can touch, but we're first affected by a quality of touch we experience through sound and music."

Joe Dawson, CEO of H Dawson Wool, said he felt "privileged" to have worked with Ms Hamilton on the project.

He said: "She's a real force of nature. What's been lovely about working with Ann is her desire to link the raw material and the origins of the fibre all the way through to the presentation that she's made, this incredible project.

"We have a more recent history of looking backwards with misty eyes about the past, but wool is an incredibly clever fibre.

"It's probably a fibre of the moment, it's a sustainable, natural, biodegradable, renewable fibre and so it means we can be looking forward, from a historic setting, to create something valuable for the modern consumer."

We Will Sing opened on 3 May and runs until 2 November.

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