PIONEERS OF THE MATERIAL WORLD
– from sea snails to Star Wars
British Textile Biennial 2025 announced for 2 October – 2 November 2025
In October 2025, the British Textile Biennial (BTB) explores invention and innovation, past, present and future, through indigenous knowledge to space-age technology from the earliest form of shelter, the tent, to space suits, and from plant-based dyes to the first polymers.
With artists and designers, BTB25 looks back to see how the textile pioneers of 20th century Lancashire were inspired by a bold vision of the future that revolutionised our lives and investigates how our own material future must learn from a distant past that is almost lost to us.
On the 50th anniversary of the successful 1975 British Mount Everest Southwest Face expedition, BTB25 throws a spotlight on the invention of innovative high-performance materials made in Lancashire, that clothed explorers and pioneers in extreme environments including Amelia Earhart for her transatlantic crossing and Hillary and Norgay on their conquest of Everest. It will survey the stream of hi-tech fabrics created in the area in the early 20th century, used for everything from airships to typewriter ribbons and high performance tents and chart the enduring relationship between these real world inventors and science fiction in a story of mutual inspiration.
Clothing the men and women that conquered the sky, mountains and oceans in the last century, with man-made fabrics and chemical concoctions, those early innovators did not realise the toll they would take on the planet which we now must seek to repair. For this edition, BTB25 also brings together artists who are working with indigenous people who hold the secrets of nature’s own innovations from purple sea snails to cochineal beetles that point to ways of healing the world we once sought to dominate.
As in previous years, BTB25 will present its exhibitions, installations and performances in former mills and other rarely accessible spaces created by the textile industry across the centuries. Once again, major artists will be given the opportunity to make new work on a grand scale, as Lubaina Himid, Christine Borland and Jasleen Kaur have done in the past.
BTB23 featured 60 artists, 27 exhibitions across 18 indoor and 2 outdoor venues, and included talks, walks, tours, workshops, and other events with attendances of over 84,000.
The full programme of artists and commissions will be announced in April 2025.