Exhibition by Yvette Hawkins at The Silk Museum

The Silk Museum will be hosting an exciting new exhibition by artist Yvette Hawkins using silk woven by a colony of 10,000 silkworms she has reared specifically for the display.

Yvette Hawkins’ INHABIT is a bio structural installation woven by silkworms and developed through residencies at The Silk Museum and The Comfrey Project. The Comfrey Project provides asylum seekers and refugees across Tyneside with a safe, welcoming environment, which promotes personal wellbeing through a sense of place and belonging. This is achieved by various shared creative activities including allotment gardening, cooking and crafts to encourage social integration and community health; the colony of silk worms were reared at the Windmill Hills Centre in Gateshead. INHABIT has been made possible by Grants for the Arts funding from Arts Council England.

Yvette’s work revolves around her mixed race heritage and nomadic upbringing, residing in forty five homes across two nations. It “explores hybridity, tradition, migration and preservation which relate to ‘the cultural other’. Silk is the main medium in this work; it provides a crucial bridge between my UK and South Korean heritage… drawing upon its rich tradition in both countries.”

Yvette is making a series of sculptures woven by 10,000 silk worms. This will develop into an immersive installation inviting meditations on migration, home making, shelter and cultural identity. Macclesfield’s heritage is built on silk; the town’s population almost trebled between 1810 and 1830 as people flocked here to work in the industry.

N.B. Silkworms will not be harmed in the making of the work.

For more information on Yvette’s residency at The Comfrey Project http://thecomfreyproject.org.uk/yvette-hawkins-returns-as-artist-in-residence/

Macclesfield Museums website: silkmacclesfield.org.uk

For more information, contact: events@silkmacclesfield.org.uk