Are You Lost? (2025)

Three sculptural textile pieces created as part of the Are You Lost? project in the Forest of Bowland with Rob St John. You can read an interview with Kate on the project in Selvedge Magazine, and listen to her discuss her processes on this podcast.

The pieces draw from the global cotton trade and mills of East Lancashire; the textile traditions of Gujarat, where a significant diaspora in Nelson is from; rural valley felting industries with links to the transatlantic slave trade; and natural materials and processes derived from the Bowland landscape.

The textiles have been worked into using traditional craft techniques with materials gathered from the landscape, embellished with drawings and shapes taken from participant creations in the community workshops. One piece has been created from sheared sheep wool gathered from Bowland farms, which was washed, carded, and felted by hand. Two more pieces are based on hand-woven cotton khadi made by weavers in Gujarat. Khadi is a hand-spun, hand-woven fabric that became a symbol of freedom from colonial rule in Gandhi’s Indian independence movement.

All colour and surface printing in the work is made from natural dyes from local plants including gorse, bracken, rowan and hawthorn. Rust and rock were ground down to make pigment dyes and charcoal made from burnt heather. One piece was immersed for months in a mineral-rich peat bog in Bowland, close to where a preserved Dark Ages burial shroud was unearthed in the 1970s, and where vast swathes of peat restoration fabric now help bring the landscape back to life.

Together with the sound and film installation, the textiles shuttle between the inside and outside of the Bowland landscape, revealing a place shaped by fabric, traditional crafts and links to the wider world.

Exhibition dates:

10–12th October 2025 – Cruck Barn, Barrowford – British Textile Biennale
2–17th October 2025 – Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster
30–31st August 2025 – Gisburn Forest Hub
2–3rd August 2025 – Jinny’s Barn, Dunsop Bridge
28th June 2025 – Pendle Festival of Culture, Nelson

Produced with the Forest of Bowland National Landscape and Lancaster Arts. Commissioned by Nature Calling, the first national programme of new art commissions by the National Landscapes Association.