Lucy + Jorge Orta
Homo Mondialis
The 2025 British Textile Biennial will host a survey exhibition of the work in textiles by Lucy + Jorge Orta. From intricate pieces in embroidery appliqué, to sculpture and immersive video installations, the work presented crosses continents from the Antarctic to the Amazon reflecting on humanity’s impact and relationship with the planet.
Pioneers of the Material World
From peak to precinct, summit to street
The exhibition shows how performance clothing that emerged at the beginning of the last century for survival in the most extreme environments, clothing pioneers from Amelia Earhart to Edmund Hillary, from the Antarctic to the Himalayas, was later redefined by northern climbers, giving rise to brands like Berghaus and Rab, all rooted in northern ingenuity and material expertise.
Aitor Throup
FROM THE MOOR
For BTB25, multi-disciplinary artist and fashion designer Aitor Throup presents ‘FROM THE MOOR’ – a retrospective exhibition showcasing Throup’s groundbreaking designs, sculptures and drawings from the past 20 years.
Clayton Creatives
Why We Wander Over Yonder
Produced by the Clayton Creatives, a group of local residents in Clayton Le Moors, this exhibition celebrates and explores their shared stories, personal triumphs and losses, journeys and explorations, embedded within the worn fabric of old outdoor clothes and equipment.
The Synthetic Revolution
Curated by academic and artist Claire Wellesley-Smith and fashion historian and broadcaster Amber Butchart, The Synthetic Revolution explores the origins of this story, tracing it back to 1941 when the drawing of a polymer into the first polyester fibre went on to position it at the heart of the modern textile industry.
Ivan Forde
Bionic Yarn
Aligned with textile company Bionic Yarn’s repurposing of plastic waste from coastal communities and marine ecosystems to create high performance textiles, artist Ivan Forde uses this material to depict new poetic visions of fictional and real bodies of water across the world.
Dhara Mehrotra
Filamentous
Mehrotra’s site-specific installation celebrates mycelium networks that are the circulatory systems of earth.
Melanie Smith & Patricio Villarreal
Tixinda
Artists Melanie Smith and Patricio Villarreal have collaborated to make a short film with a Mixtec community in Oaxaca that explores the ancient relationship between them and the plicopurpura pansa sea snail.
Porfirio Gutiérrez
Based in California, Zapotec artist, Porfirio Gutiérrez creates installations and performances that explore the contemporary and evolving experience of Native Americans.
Tania Candiani
Tania Candiani’s works engage with the pigment’s pre-colonial origins and its transformation through colonial systems of extraction and trade.
Sarah Rosalena
Sarah Rosalena works between traditional craft traditions and emerging technology, breaking boundaries through her hybrid forms rooted in Indigenous cosmologies, re-interpreted through digital tools and her hand.
Crystal Bennes
When Computers Were Women
These four woven pieces were developed from a residency at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research), the home of the Large Hadron Collider.
Tim Smith
Weaving the Future
This multi-media installation, by photographer and filmmaker Tim Smith, explores how the innovative spirit that powered the textile industry over the last three centuries is driving a new revolution in the 21st century.
Jamie Holman
Machine Made Fabric
Inspired by the futuristic inventiveness of Brian Mercer, artist Jamie Holman, worked with young people at Blackburn Youth Zone to create a film which is presented on the state-of-the-art screen built into the new extension of the building, The Fusebox.
Christian Jeffery
Comfort Ye One Another
Christian Jeffery creates beautiful, hand-painted football shirts. Taking inspiration from cult players, iconic kits, fan culture, local traditions and historical artefacts, his paintings often incorporate plants, flowers and architecture associated with a certain team or city.
åbäke & Le Cercle du S226erpent bleu
From Lancashire to Northern France, åbäke & Le Cercle du S226erpent Bleu from Roubaix, trace the story of a vanished football team in a fictional story that shows the enduring power of collective action in the sport, rather than bitter rivalry.
Re:Fashion Challenge 2025
Re:Fashion Challenge is a collaborative project by Gawthorpe Textiles Collection, UCLan and the British Textile Biennial. Teams of young people collaborate with fashion mentors to develop collections from second-hand clothes, dead stock, discarded and recycled materials.
Ninon Ardisson
LOAM
Artist and games designer, Ninon Ardisson, speculates how textile production in the 20th century might have developed differently if informed by local environments rather than military and industrial demands and how biological materials could shape a different trajectory for innovation.
Alexis Maxwell
Memory Fabric
An immersive, sci-fi-inspired multimedia installation based on an imagined fabric that holds the memories of local people and the land around Pendle.
Hannah Robson
Transformation
Hannah Robson presents a monumental work that responds to the Harris’s archive of the Courtauld Factory in Preston in the impressive newly opened spaces of the museum.
Dhaqan Collective
The Aqal (House of Weaving Songs)
The Aqal is a structure vital to Somali life, built to endure the harsh landscape with limited resources. Constructing one is a communal effort, with women weaving the structure together while singing songs that have been passed down through generations.
IGC Fashion & Salford Slow Fashion
Woven Worlds
Woven Worlds, Salford Slow Fashion (UK) and IGC Fashion (Uganda) have come together to create a distinctive fashion collection. Godfrey Katende of IGC Fashion is leading vital work to revive and modernise bark cloth, helping to reframe perceptions and ensure its continued relevance.
Margo Selby
The Future of Colour
BTB reaches Lancaster for the first time with Margo Selby’s beautiful textile hanging, Breathing Colour, a celebratory textile installation, immersive in colour, form and sound, joyful and uplifting.
Emilia Hewitt
As It Happens
Emilia Hewitt undertook a summer residency at the Whitaker to develop work responding to the ‘Learning from the Land’ theme within her photographic and print making practice.
Sally Hirst
Warped
Sally Hirst presents a solo exhibition at Helmshore Mill exploring histories of disability within mill worker communities & the Luddite movement, contrasted with contemporary relationships with AI technologies.
Sarah Lee
Riding a Bike in a Flight Suit
Sarah Lee presents an epic embroidery work exploring histories of manufacturing companies in Lancashire who produced high performance fabrics using innovative techniques.
Materials Library
The Materials Library explores the origins of fibres that have long clothed and connected us.
Kate O'Farrell and Rob St John
Are You Lost?
Are You Lost? Is a multimedia installation from artists Kate O’Farrell and Rob St John.
Anna Clough
Fold Anew
Anna Clough’s outdoor sculpture, based on the traditional sheep fold, celebrates sheep farming and fleece that have a long legacy in Lancashire.
Future Fashion Landscapes
Future Fashion Landscapes is a collaboration between Centre for Sustainable Fashion, University of the Arts London and the South East England and South West England Fibresheds, focusing on fibre production and biodiversity enhancement.
The Textile Study Group
Seven Bags Full
A new group exhibition from the Textile Study Group a group of nationally and internationally recognised textile artists and tutors.
Textile Culture Net
Future Past
Future Past is an online exhibition via Instagram presented by Textile Culture Net (TCN) that brings together artists from across the globe whose work explores the often conflicted relationship between humans and the universe through textiles, along a sliding scale of power and resistance TCN is an international network of four textile institutions