textiles
Bronwen Jones
Please tell us a bit about yourself.
Hi, I’m Bronwen, an artist and textile repairer, I grew up in London and have been based in Amsterdam for the last 6 years. My art practice is based around an interest in bodies and textiles and how they both bear the traces of time and memory. I’ve worked with different mediums such as sculpture, weaving, writing, and making publications, but for the last year my main discipline has been visibly mending clothing as a way to unfold personal stories and recognise the emotional value of our belongings. Through mending, I wish to bring attention to the potential of textiles as containers of stories and reevaluate our relationship to our belongings by reclaiming materials that may otherwise go to waste. At the moment I am teaching mending workshops and taking commissions; I hope to make mending easy and accessible, and to encourage a more caring, sustainable and slow way of living.
We know that you did a BA in art and design at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. How has this experience shaped your view of textiles?
I studied in the TXT department which stands for both textile and text and looks at the social and contextual importance of textiles. It very much shaped my way of thinking through textiles — as tangible devices to think through the world in a soft way. It was a more art oriented way of studying textiles than doing textile design; I like that this has allowed my practice to move between the worlds of art, craft, and sustainable fashion, giving me a fluid position. Textile and craft techniques have often been devalued as unpaid women’s work enacted invisibly in the home, I see them as vast sources of knowledge that should be celebrated and valued.
You beautifully wrote on your website that broken garments have the potential to inspire us to reimagine broken systems. Can you share your thoughts on that and more about the meaning embedded into your practice?
I started the project Clothing Correspondence in 2021 after a year of covid lockdowns and isolation. I was missing having spaces to meet people so I invited the public (firstly through Instagram, then later through a residency at PrintRoom, Rotterdam) to bring me a garment to repair in exchange for a conversation. I realised that through this offering and the intimacy of the garment people would often begin to tell me personal stories and by looking at a garment that has been worn close to the body I could begin to see idiosyncrasies of how they moved or their daily habits. Naturally, we would often go on to discuss how we value or care for our bodies, relationships or communities. The garment was like a key into someone’s personal memories and their values. I found it very beautiful that by repairing something tangible and personal we also began to discuss things that are less tangible and that feel out of our control. In recent years I’ve felt increasingly hopeless about politics and systems that we live within, I hope that through these small acts of care I can bring a slowness and encourage people to practice empathy through my work — qualities that I see as undervalued in our society but that have sustained life for centuries.
Tell us a bit more about your publication “Clothing correspondence” and how this project came about.
Following the residency at PrintRoom where I repaired clothes for the public in exchange for a conversation, they invited me to make a small publication. I found the intimacy of the exchanges very beautiful so didn’t want to directly record the conversations but I felt a publication has a similar intimacy between the writer and reader so decided to reflect on some of the stories shared with me and the potential of textiles as containers of memories. The stories explore the loved ones that inhabit our clothes alongside us, how our bodies or moths slowly rub holes into fabric, how stories and practices can be passed down generations and connect us with those ancestors, and invites the reader to find their own memories within their clothes. There is also an instructional darning guide and a reading list with books from PrintRoom’s collection and my own. I asked my friend, graphic designer Agathe Gabrielle, to do the illustrations and design which she did with beautiful sensitivity, and we riso-printed in pink and green which are my favourite colours for darning.
Where do you think lies the biggest potential to preserve important local crafts and traditions?
I think in education and sharing knowledge; we are increasingly disconnected from the origin of materials and objects, and how / by who things are made. The price of store-bought objects doesn’t reflect the time that goes into making them, thus the time and skill of craftspeople are under-appreciated. I think if there was better education on these processes and more attention given to caring for what we already have then we could consume less and invest in lovingly and well-made objects that are built to last forever. In my repair workshops, people are often surprised by how simple it can be to mend a hole if you take the time, I think we need to come more in touch with the objects around us and make learning accessible to a wide range of people while also supporting small businesses and artists. I think just by demonstrating it is possible to DIY it gives people the confidence to try.
Can you share with us some resources, about textiles and mending, that you have been using for your own learning over the years?
There is a photography book I love called Making do and getting by, it is photos of rough fixes that the photographer sees in everyday life, like a welly boot being used to prop open a door, I love this potential of imperfection and noticing the beauty in everyday life. When I do mending workshops I like to teach people to appreciate the imperfections. I offer the tools and demonstrate the basic techniques but I think we learn the most by trying and learning from the material. I think it is so beautiful to see the hands of the maker in the material and to slowly get back in touch and understand how it was made. I love that the garment then bears the traces of this learning process, there are some pieces that I’ve been continuously repairing over the last 4 years since I learned to darn, like the mittens, each time I do it in a slightly different yarn colour so you can see the time passing. My inspiration comes from far and wide; I like to look at online museum archives for images of old textiles and techniques — I love that textiles have been made in similar ways for hundreds of years, I don’t wish to break new ground in my work but to celebrate that these hand techniques have been utilised for many centuries through different cultures, they are everyday art forms.
What upcoming projects make you excited right now?
I’m really excited to be working with some different vintage clothes/maker shops in Amsterdam in the coming months. Atelier Hop will host me soon in their beautiful new space to take repair commissions, and I have a collaboration coming up with Yohara Vintage who asked me to make something new from the clothing/materials that can’t be sold because they have stains or imperfections, so I’ve been on the sewing machine recently which has been a nice change to my working pace.
Where and how can people engage more with your work?
I post updates and upcoming events mainly on Instagram (@bronwen.yj) and try to keep my website up to date (bronwenjones.info). If in Amsterdam I regularly teach workshops or take repair commissions, and I’ll be popping up in different spaces soon. All pictures belong to Bronwen
