As part of Your Trust’s current exhibition Liz Collins: Mischief, Touchstones has learnt more about ‘queering’ their collections in order to better represent the LGBTQ+ community in Rochdale. The exhibition includes loans from Bolton Art Gallery, Library & Museum and Walker Art Gallery who have both worked extensively to uncover LGBTQ narratives through their exhibitions, collections and programming. For this event, we’ll be joined by the individuals behind this work including Pierette Squires at Bolton Art Gallery, Library & Museum and Dominic Bilton from The Whitworth Art Gallery, with a Q&A to follow.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
All four gallery spaces at Touchstones Rochdale have been taken over by Mischief, an exhibition featuring new textile art and selected pieces from the archives of New York-based queer feminist artist and designer Liz Collins and curated by Julia Bryan-Wilson.
Showcasing the breadth of Collins’ work and continuing threads throughout her career to date, the exhibition will also showcase the ties to industrial making methods, from traditional and low-tech to modern hi-tech approaches, with implicit links to Rochdale’s own historic textile industry.
Alongside Collins’ work, Mischief will give space to the lives and experiences of queer people in Rochdale and other former mill towns in the North of England.
Queer People, Places and Things will exhibit work from significant LGBTQ+ collections, including works from the Juan Yarur Torres Collection – Fundacion AMA in Chile, as well as items curated from the Rochdale Borough collections by a group of Rochdale locals and presented through a queer lens. Through working with local, regional and national LGBTQ+ groups, Mischief will tie together Collins’ large scale textile artworks with the often unheard and uncelebrated stories of queer history to be found in our own community.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Pierrette Squires is a Team Leader at Bolton Museum managing the museum, archive and aquarium collections. A conservator by profession she is a trustee & mentor for the Institute of Conservation. As an activist for over 20 years, she runs the Bolton LGBT Partnership, a group aimed at raising awareness, support and acceptance within Bolton, she has been on the GMCA LGBT+ advisory panel and volunteered at numerous LGBTQ+ events. Passionate about sustainable inclusive access and improving diversity in collections recent work to actively collect from Bolton’s under-represented communities has drawn together Pierrette’s professional and activist roles.
Dominic Bilton is a PhD researcher in the school of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies (FAHACS) at the University of Leeds. His PhD research, in close collaboration with The Whitworth in Manchester and in dialogue with the innovative ‘constituent museum’ approach to museum practice, is investigating what queer theory’s non-normative approach to gender, sexuality and identity offers to current debates in participatory museology. At the Whitworth, Dominic is the Student and Young Persons Producer helping young people connect art, ideas, and communities together to enact social change using the gallery’s art collection.