Yard Gallery.
Situated in the grounds of Wollaton Park, Yard Gallery holds a great collection of machines from the textile industry from the 1800’s onwards.
As part of my research and development for the Heanor Gateway Sculpture, I have delved into the history of Heanors industrial past and found myself surrounded by the machines once responsible for creating stockings and other knitted items in the factories that once stood in the area. Now standing silent these large industrial machines feature a wide range of arms, pulleys and cogs. Made of cast metal, wood and leather the vast weight and scale of the machines is still there under a veil of dust, when you stand in the museum surrounded by these machines you can almost hear the clatter and noise from the machines, the smell of the cotton mixed with oil still resides in the museum. It is in this atmosphere that I created the vast majority of my sketches for the sculpture.
The staff at the museum very kindly gave me special permission to sit amongst the displays to get a real close up experience of the machinery, to see them close up really helps to get ideas flowing, studying the shapes, colours, tones and textures. The sketches produced helped to give the public attending the consultations for the sculpture a feel of the ideas that helped to form the final idea.
Many thanks to the staff at Yard Gallery