Overview

Partners: Cromford Mills, Arts & Heritage, Arts Council England

Cromford Mills commissioned Hetain Patel to produce an artwork in response to their site as part of the Meeting Point programme.

Cotton Labour, a large-scale sculpture of symbolic portraits woven from yarn, remembered workers crucial to the success of Sir Richard Arkwright’s cotton spinning mills during the industrial revolution and depicted the local women and children that formed the majority of Cromford Mills’ labour force.

The artwork also honoured the enslaved labour of the wider cotton industry and members of Hetain’s own family who picked cotton in Kenya and India.

“Cotton Labour”, Cromford Mills, Derbyshire. https://hetainpatel.com/work/public-art/cotton-labour