Pattern Cutters at the Ragged School Museum considered the building and its connection to East London’s richly varied textile and garment industries, all of which have their own stories telling of materials, movement and migration. What became known as the ‘Rag Trade’ had evolved through the ebb and flow of different working communities, transported over time by social, economic and religious upheavals and conflicts. Amongst them were Huguenot silk weavers, Jewish tailors and button manufacturers from Northern and Eastern Europe and garment makers and fabric traders from different parts of Asia and Africa.
Compiled by artists, Antoni Malinowski and Oona Grimes with curator, Jenni Lomax, Pattern Cutters brought together a mix of artists of differing ages and origins. Against the background of the Ragged School’s richly textured history, their use of fabric, threads, clothing, colour and form, film and performance, weave other stories; memories of lives lived and of magic and the imagination.
A shift of emphasis was brought about by the different combinations of artists that were re-formed each week into a new ‘chapter’ of the exhibition; ideas of ritual and celebration, manufacture and care, use and repurposing and of covering and adornment, were embodied across all aspects of Pattern Cutters.
The week-long exhibitions in the Museum’s dedicated gallery space comprised works that formed connections, loosely described in the three-word titles. Performances, programmed every Saturday in relation to each exhibition theme, played an important part in expanding the thoughts and ideas that connected the particular groupings of works.
Around the kaleidoscopic hub of the weekly iterations, other works were placed in specific locations across the ground floor of the building, remaining present for the duration.