Curtain No.1 Mobilizes textiles to explore how we should engage with archival material when they lack their own archive. The work consists of embroidered organza panels, patched together to form a veil. Curtain No.1 was created specifically for installation as part of Outhouse Gallery’s Boundaries Exhibition, and when illuminated its surface resembles a medieval church’s stained glass window, evoking the pedagogical role that stained glass historically served in conveying a semiotic system of power.

The embroidered imagery initially appear discordant, but all relate the life of Sir Gilbert Heathcote, a man largely forgotten today but instrumental in the formation of Britain’s slave trade, the East India Company and the creation of the Bank of England.