Transformation

A project commissioned by the British Textile Biennial 2025 and The Harris Museum Art Gallery & Library

Shown as part of the biennial 2 October - 2 November 2025

The work remains at the Harris until June 2026

Video by Lucy Forrester

Handwoven and knotted textile sculpture using rayon and paper yarns, 2025

The Harris and the British Textile Biennial commissioned Hannah Robson to create a new work that explores themes of invention and innovation.  

Transformation responds to research into Rayon making and Courtaulds Factory in Preston. The artwork is a 20-metre-long textile sculpture hanging through the centre of the Harris. The piece has been made through hand-weaving and knotting threads creating three-dimensional shapes.

Transformation references the colours and materials of the Courtauld Factory including the off-white of the wood pulp, the black of coal and the orange of liquid Rayon. Hannah used Rayon yarns interconnected with paper, some were bleached to change the colours throughout the piece. She has sought to capture the idea of material transformation and celebrates the magic of yarn.

‘…this delicate and ethereal work is a tour de force of technical weaving using three dimensional weaves that turn, twist, open out, curve and intersect’ Dr Sue Malvern, Textile Society News, No 88, 2026

‘Robson’s practice has long been concerned with how textiles occupy and shape space, and here she pushes that inquiry into architectural scale. …the sculpture seems to breathe within the space, filtering light and subltely altering the armosphere as viewers move around it. … Through Transformation, Robson not only honours the region’s textile heritage but reimagines it, thread by thread, into something expansive, immersive and wholly transformative.’ Selvedge Magazine