Textiles form the core of Caroline Bartlett's practice, providing not only the means and materials to process and articulate ideas, but also often through acting as a reference point in relation to content. The historical, social, and cultural associations of textiles, their significance in relation to touch and their ability to trigger memory become components of the work. Imprinting, stitching, erasing, and reworking, folding and unfolding become defining characteristics, whilst explorations have also resulted in works which integrate textiles with other media such as porcelain.
Examples of work can be seen in various public, corporate and private collections including those of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Crafts Council. Caroline's work has included site specific commissions and responses to historic locations, museum collections, (such as the textile collection at the Whitworth Art Gallery) archives and encyclopaedias. Central to these responses is an interest in the role played by such sites of cultural production in shaping individual and collective identities, memories and value systems: in determining what we choose to preserve, which stories we tell and how we tell them.
