Festival of Making

Previously a fashion designer working with factories in the Global South, Liaqat Rasul has a long history of interacting with and interrogating the culture of industry.

In Umeed (Oh-meed) امید – Gobaith – Hope, Rasul repeats and builds upon the device used throughout his previous work, expanding his exploration of the mobile face as a motif to express culture, community and societal connection.

The work directly responds to his appreciation for the Partners of Herbert Parkinson, the name by which all staff are known. Mixed opaque and translucent plastics become a metaphor for the feeling of welcome, transparency and openness experienced by the artist, from an organisation shaped to address power imbalance and hierarchy in the industrial setting.

Reading the factory floor as if it were an animated circuit board, also present in the work is the artist’s repeated use of cartographic motifs, celebrating movement and the travelling of ideas, migration and the creation of patterns over time.

Material references gathered from across the factory production lines are collaged into the work.

Mainly using waste items, Rasul has collected plastic tape, fabric offcuts, super stick, neon stickers, cord, thread, hooks, wadding and feathers.

Through hand-sewn collage, he has incorporated these discarded items and combined them with shapes made on the machines by Herbert Parkinson Partners, Sophie Bell-Carr and Alisha Cooper.

In rich contrast to the clean lines of production, the work combines personal textiles collected by the artist over decades of work.

Created in isolation from one another, each feature of the mobile face can be experienced as a series of anomalies, much like people, class and language that form society as a whole.

For Rasul, society is a jigsaw of different parts, fitting together, building community – hope.

The Artist

Liaqat Rasul, a gay, dyslexic Welsh-Pakistani artist born in 1974, works in collage and sculpture. He transforms discarded materials—envelopes, tickets, fabric scraps, wire hangers— into vibrant, tactile compositions.

These analogue creations tell visual stories of multicultural identity and mental health, celebrating real-world connections and the beauty found in imperfection. For Rasul, art is an act of hope. He advocates for multiculturalism and the importance of valuing our support networks.

Inspired by human vulnerability, mental health, and historical events, his recent pieces address injustices such as the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the 1943 Bengal Famine.

His practice, which emphasises tangible engagement and community bonds, was recently celebrated in a solo show at ‘Nau Nau Doh Chaar’, Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham. The exhibition explored resilience and migrant experiences and served as a retrospective of his last 25 years in fashion and art.

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The Manufacturer

Herbert Parkinson Textile Factory, based in Darwen, Lancashire, became part of the John Lewis Partnership in 1953, and ever since has been a thriving example of UK design, quality and craftsmanship. Combining the best of modern technology and traditional skills, Herbert Parkinson makes many of John Lewis’s own brand soft furnishings, duvets, pillows, and all of their Made to Measure products.

Herbert Parkinson is a major employer in the local community, with over 200 Partners working there. They are committed to supporting the textile industry and have been successful in keeping British manufacturing at the heart of Lancashire.

This is the second Art in Manufacturing residency hosted by Herbert Parkinson, following a residency during Season Five with artists Sarah Marsh and Stephanie Jefferies, which celebrated the factory’s 70th anniversary.

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