Axisweb Selects: Hannah Leighton-Boyce

Hannah Leighton-Boyce, The Event of the Thread, 2014 Image courtesy the artist

We profile artist Hannah Leighton-Boyce for our regular slot on CreativeTourist



We’ve probably all used the expression “on tenterhooks”. But how many of us know where it comes from? Artist Hannah Leighton-Boyce is about to bring this familiar expression vividly to life in a new temporary installation called The Event of the Thread for Helmshore Mills in Lancashire’s Rossendale valley.

If you didn’t already know it, a “tenter” was the wooden frame on which mill workers stretched wet wool to re-stretch the fabric to its proper size and shape. Over time, “on tenterhooks” has also came to mean a state of tension or unease.

Leighton-Boyce initially saw the piece as a one-day installation of a sculptural line crossing time and place. She wanted the work to symbolise the things so often overlooked in history books – the skills, cooperation and community spirit that characterised the mill-workers' lives.

Once underway, The Event of the Thread evolved day by day, enticing local people to get involved. This, in turn, has inspired the artist and informed the development of the piece. It also means that the final installation relies on the support and participation of the residents for it actually to happen.

The project will culminate in a community event (28 September, 2014), when a thread of 3,300 yards – or just under two miles in length – will be passed by residents along the mapped lines of ten “tenter” frames that once stood above Higher Mill in Helmshore, on land that now houses the residents of Hyacinth Close, Narcissus Avenue and Anemone Drive.

“As it is passes from hand to hand,” says Leighton-Boyce, “the historic line will cross over gardens and fences, weaving through houses, in and out of letterboxes, windows and doors, around lamp-posts and across roads, temporarily joining the ten frames into one sculptural line and connecting different lives and times, people and places.”

In bridging the gap between her initial idea and actually making it happen, Leighton-Boyce admits to having herself been “on tenterhooks”. This is definitely public art with a difference – a one-off event that memorialises the past through collective action and community participation.

See more of her work below.

Sheila McGregor, September 2014


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