Image: Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
Castlefield Gallery will host ‘INTERWOVEN’ from 9 to 20 September 2026 as part of Manchester Fashion Week. Presented by the Northern Fashion Collective in collaboration with the gallery, the British Textile Biennial and Manchester artists Pippa Eason and Nick Booton, the exhibition will examine how fashion might be reimagined through collaboration between artists, educators and communities.
The exhibition draws on Manchester’s textile history, from the mills and makers that helped transform the production and trade of cloth to current questions about materials, ethics and environmental responsibility. Its central work, ‘The Universal Tee of Life’, is a large-scale community installation made by hundreds of primary- and secondary-school students from across Greater Manchester in collaboration with Stitched Up CIC.
The participating young people transformed donated T-shirts into individual textile artworks expressing their hopes and visions for the future. The installation is presented as a collective response to the question of how fashion can be shaped by more than one discipline or voice.
‘INTERWOVEN’ will also include excerpts from three exhibitions presented at the British Textile Biennial in 2025. ‘The Materials Library’ considers natural fibres, regenerative resources and next-generation materials, while ‘The Synthetic Revolution’ examines the cultural and environmental history of synthetic textiles. Together, the displays ask audiences to consider how the materials used in clothing influence lives, economies and the environment.
A further section, ‘Woven Worlds’, features a fashion collection by Godfrey Katende of IGC Fashion in Uganda, created in collaboration with Salford Slow Fashion. The project is described as emerging from a shared commitment to ethical textiles and an examination of the historical and continuing colonial impacts of the textile industry.
The exhibition will be accompanied by ‘Will-of-the-Wisp’ (2026), a new short film by Eason and Booton developed with Manchester Fashion Week. Combining documentation of makers and their processes—including footage contributed by the British Textile Biennial—with images of the natural environment, the film reflects on attention, care, interdependence and contemporary fashion choices.
‘INTERWOVEN’ will be free to visit at Castlefield Gallery, 2 Hewitt Street, Manchester, during regular opening hours of noon to 5:30pm from Wednesday to Sunday. Castlefield Gallery’s wider programme includes artist development and support for artists’ careers across Greater Manchester, the North West and beyond.
