From A Modern Land

This exhibition presents a selection of highlights from Bolton Museum’s internationally important collection of Ancient Egyptian textiles. Alongside are displayed paintings, drawings and prints by artist Ros Ford inspired by Egypt and Egyptian artefacts.

Ros and Tom Hardwick, the Museum’s curator of Egyptology, have selected for display textiles that haven’t been shown for many years. 

My work is about the vibrancy and juxtaposition of past and present that I witness every time I visit modern Egypt. These could be momentary images of contemporary life or eroded ancient artefacts and icons.

Ros Ford

Ros Ford is an artist based in Bristol. She lived and worked in Egypt for over six years.

Ros has shown her work widely in solo and group exhibitions in the UK and overseas, including:

• The Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo, Egypt
• Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery
• The New Alexandria library, Egypt
• The Royal West of England Academy
• The British Council, Egypt

I’m attracted to the fragility, the wear and tear, the repairs, the colours, offbeat images and craftsmanship of the pieces. Textiles bring us closer to people and I like to imagine the individuals who made or wore them.

I’ve made two new textile pieces for From a Modern Land inspired by and displayed with Bolton Museum’s collection. I’m also showing some contemporary objects I’ve brought from Egypt.

Ros Ford

Ros will be giving a gallery talk and tour of the exhibition on Tuesday 1st May at 5.15 PM.

Items from the Museum Collection

The inscribed mummy bandages in the exhibition are displayed for the first time since their acquisition by the Museum in 1983. This has been made possible by external conservation.

This involved relaxing the badly crumpled fabric, removing dust and dirt, stopping the edges fraying, and mounting the bandages on supportive netting.

Throughout the Dynastic Period, Egyptian textile workshops produced extremely fine pleated plain linen, but by the First Century AD more colourful clothes began to be worn. Baggy wool or linen tunics and over-tunics with clavi (vertical bands) decorated with figures, patterns or geometrical designs were especially popular with men and women. Paintings and carvings on stone and wood were a source of inspiration for textile designs.

This change in fashions coincided with the conversion of many Egyptians to Christianity. Instead of being mummified and wrapped in bandages, people were buried wearing their best clothes, preserving them for archaeologists.

Most of the Museum’s collection of textiles was given by excavators to the first curators of the Museum in return for a scientific assessment of their finds. Early displays in the museum stressed the technical aspects of the textiles. By contrast, this exhibition aims to display the pieces as works of art.

For more information about the exhibition

Prints and cards are for sale in the Museum shop

Some of the work displayed is for sale. Please contact Ros for further information.

Email: ros@ros-ford.co.uk

Telephone: 0117 9776790

More work and information can be seen on www.ros-ford.co.uk