Mining Couture commission

'Mining Couture' emerges from Barber Swindells' (Claire Barber and Steve Swindells collaboration)commission at the Leicester County Council Snibston Discovery Museum, UK, as part of the Transform regeneration programme.

Throughout the commission Barber Swindells worked across the Snibston site where links to other collections were established including those at the National Coalmining Museum in Wakefield.
By juxtaposing the fabrics and material processes of coal-mining and fashion, and their respective site-specific and non-site specific natures, the project reveals the rich collisions between contrary worlds. This is further explored by situating functionally ambiguous and ephemeral artefacts within the hard and utilitarian landscape of industrial production. The arrangement, moreover, provided the context for reframing metaphorical relationships between coal-mining and fashion; between the macro-scale of the geological seam, managed and exploited for its material resources (through engineering operations) and the micro-scale of the stitched seam, whose tightness, looseness, slackness (or frayed condition) affords varied natures of the fashioned garment.

The outcome of this archive-driven process resulted in an inflatable sculpture based on a Snibston ventilation fan (made by an inflatable ‘bouncy castle’ business - KLC Castles), adaptions of an original ‘Pit Brow Lass’ work-wear and an artist’s book Mining Couture, Black Dog, London, [paperback ISBN9781907317927; 143 pages].