'We Will Sing' #1

A new exhibition has opened in Salts Mill's roof space, as part of Bradford City of Culture 2025. Called 'We Will Sing', it's an installation by the American artist Ann Hamilton, her first major work created in the UK for more than 30 years. 

The notes say: 'We Will Sing' is a work of memory and imagining. Drawing on the origins of the textile processes that once filled this huge space, Hamilton’s site-responsive installation weaves together voice, song and printed word in a material surround made from raw and woven wool sourced from local textile companies H Dawson, based at Salts Mill, and William Halstead, which celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2025.'

The photos in this post are taken in one of the three rooms that make up the roof space, originally a spinning shed. Most of the room is left empty, a vast, echoing space filled with the haunting voice of Emily Eagen, humming and singing a medieval folk song. This plays from three large, revolving, horn speakers, original to the mill and once used for announcements and alerts to the workforce. The effect is surreal, a kind of summoning of ghosts. 

There is written material too, in the form of broadsheets complied by the artist, which visitors are able to pick up and take away. 

I was really lucky to be there when it was relatively empty of visitors, which emphasised the floating and yet cocooning sense of history that the space holds. It really sent tingles up my spine!  It also sits firmly within the very modern way the mill is now used. Salts Mill has been transformative within our community ever since its inception in the 1850s, and that transformation continues under the sensitive stewardship of its current owners.