Angela Leathley, Harewood House Trust Visitor Experience Team Member

I have been makings things all my life. Sometimes out of necessity, sometimes for pleasure.

I have spent a large part of my working life working in IT. In 2009 I was made redundant from my role as IT Infrasture Manager, which had a dramatic impact on my life. At the time I was also a volunteer at Gayle Mill, in Wensleydale.

The Mill had a craft group which made items to sell to raise funds for the Mill. I now had plenty of time to craft things, which helped the Mill and also helped me.

We tried different crafts and I discovered hand made felting. This in turn led on to rug making. The material needs to have a high wool content to hold the tabs for the pile for the rug in place, hence the connection with felting.

Handmade Rag Rug by Angela Leathley

As a group, we were very successful, and had a few exhibitions at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes. Alongside crafting I undertook a business course for mature adults sponsored by the Prince’s Trust, and in due course, set up a business called ‘Made in the Dales’.

Things were starting to go well. I was demonstrating felt making to the public at Aysgarth Visitor Centre. The group had crafts for sale, all seemed well. Then out of the blue my dad was taken to hospital and died within the week. My priorities changed and my craft activities stopped.

The current exhibition at Harewood has inspired me to start again. There are many colourful and exciting displays, but it is also a very tactile exhibition, which I find very appealing, working with textiles.

My main material is second hand wool coats, mainly from charity shops. I love turning something practical and serviceable into a re-purposed item of beauty, which still has a practical purpose. I have been recycling all my life, starting with taking the pop bottles back to the shop for the deposit, to the current day.

Harewood Biennial 2024 Create Elevate, Jakup Ferri The Monumentality of the Everyday, Drew Forsyth

Recycled materials have been used in many of the works presented for Harewood Biennial 2024: Create/Elevate.

The Monumentality of the Everyday, on display in the Spanish Library, is a site-specific installation of embroideries, carpets and paintings. The textile works were co-created by Jakup Ferri in collaboration with women artisans from Albania, Kosovo, Burkina Faso and Suriname. Conceived as a space for learning, the installation supports carpet-making and embroidery as techniques of inclusion, coherence and community building.

Rebecca Chesney, Conditions at Present, is an installation of 25 windsocks made from reclaimed fabric from tents salvaged from music festivals which stands proudly below the Terrace on Sun Sides

Rebecca Chesney, Conditions at Present, Drew Forsyth

Whereas Lucia Pizzani has repurposed arboreal fragments fallen in the woods of Harewood to create Cultivo y Memoria, site-specific installation with live plants, ceramic sculptures.

Exploring ideas around spirituality in the vegetal world, the group of sculptures in the Walled Vegetable Garden are connected through the ancestral Mesoamerican way of planting known as ‘the three sisters’; where corn, beans and squash complement each other in a collaborative growth process.

Lucia Pizzani Cultivo y Memoria in the Walled Garden, Drew Forsyth

Entry to Harewood Biennial 2024: Create/Elevate is included with admission to Harewood.