Mapping with Threads

True traced the history of the birth place of her grandfather who was born in Exmouth Street, Stepney, East London in1881. The 1881 census records show that the majority of her grandfather’s neighbours were employed in the garment industry. With the aim of telling a story about his world using the metaphor of the garment industry, she visited Jewish and Bangladeshi community centres, where she interviewed individuals and organised reminiscence sessions to collect oral testimonies from East Enders, who had been involved in the garment industry. Through interviews with individuals, their experiences and memories, the research found a visual form in the Mapping with Threads installation.

Navigational chart drawings created by overlaying enlarged pattern diagrams over a map of East London.

Fabric Map

The interviewees spoke in very general terms about the coats and suits they made. True conducted research at the Jewish Museum and the London College of Fashion Library to find out in greater detail what fabrics and designs were used.

By carefully only choosing patterns from the Tailor and Cutter magazine that related to the oral histories a map of the area was drawn by overlaying enlarged pattern diagrams. Through tracing some of the lines of the main thoroughfares of East London by placing the pattern diagrams directly over them, the work evolved and developed into something that can be described as a navigational chart. Considering the long and harrowing journeys the migrants travelled in order to reach their destination in the East End, True decided to redraw the pattern diagrams by hand using arrows of various types to indicate movement and migration.

Fabric Map edition of screen prints on Velin Arches Blanc paper - 120 cm x 160 cm

Pocket Details

It became apparent through speaking to the interviewees that a division of labour had existed in the garment industry, whereby jobs were broken down into sections (section work) and the individuals were paid according to the number of pieces that they completed (piece work). To echo the nature of the garment industry’s repetitive enduring labour, the pocket details of various garments were printed onto fourteen hundred sheets of tissue paper, which were then painted with latex and arranged into piles.

Pocket Details (detail)
Screenprints
Fabriano 50% cotton
50 x 70 cm

Pocket Details
Screenprints on tissue paper, latex, wax and thread - varied measurements.

Tissue paper was chosen as a substrate for the prints because of the historical association it has with making clothes patterns. One interviewee told how when she worked in her father’s sweatshop in the East End she had sewn letters in the pockets of greatcoats she made for soldiers and how a soldier had replied to one of the letters that she had written. Pockets were also significant to the migrants who travelled long distances and stored their precious possessions inside them.