Radical Pairings

An Art in Manufacturing publication, Radical Pairings documents five women artists who exhibited new work in 2022.

Created during Art in Manufacturing residencies with manufacturers in the North, the publication features Hannah Leighton-Boyce + Darwen Terracotta, Liz Wilson + CNC Robotics, Nicola Ellis + Ritherdon, Jacqueline Donachie + Lancashire Saw Company, and Raisa Kabir with Queen Street Mill and John Spencer Textiles.

Art critic and writer Elizabeth Fullerton was invited to explore these artists’ residencies, resulting in the essay Artists and Factories Make Radical Pairings which forms the central piece of writing in this publication. Discussing their practices and the unique nature of working as an artist within the industrial setting, Fullerton introduces work created in response to and alongside workforce communities. 

The Radical Pairings publication was created and edited as a partnership between the National Festival of Making and theCOLAB, a collaborative laboratory connecting people, land and art.

From short-term residencies to long-term collaborations, each artist embedded themselves within a manufacturing environment, working closely with skilled labour forces, specialist materials and industrial processes. These residencies offered an unusual but generative context with the factory floor becoming an extension of a studio, the rhythms of production informing new ways of making and thinking.

Radical Pairings gestures not only to the innovative collaborations forged between artists and manufacturers, but also to the deeper reimagining made possible when these encounters are shaped by openness, experimentation and care. In doing so, it invites us to rethink the boundaries between industry and art as co-creative forces with the potential to shape new cultural, material, and social futures.