For today’s news item we're featuring Paradise Works studio member Claire Tindale, who predominantly works within sculpture and site-responsive installation. In an artist film created by Steve Iles and commissioned by Paradise Works, we'll look back at one of her major installations Felt, a site-responsive exhibition, originally commissioned by Saltaire Inspired and exhibited in Salts Mill , 2021.

Watch the Artist Film below where we follow Claire's creative process as she develops her installation at Paradise Works Gallery in preparation for her exhibition Felt, shown in the roof space of Salts Mill, Saltaire (2021). The film was created by studio member Steve Iles and commissioned by Paradise Works. Felt was supported by Saltaire Inspired, Arts Council England, Curtis Wool Bradford and The Campaign for Wool.

Claire used wool as the central material to explore the industrial heritage of Salts Mill and surrounding village. Creating villages of small hand-crafted houses, each piece was carefully sculpted using special needle-felting techniques to a design developed by Claire and shared with the public through a series of workshops at Salts Mill. Responding to the historic and contemporary contexts of the mill and village, Felt explored the relationship between industry and home, the communities that develop and the supportive, symbiotic relationship that results. You can read more about the exhibition at Salts Mill here.

"I work predominantly with sculpture and installation, which is often site-responsive. Variations in scale are used to explore physical and psychological spaces in connection with aspects of the human condition, and the associated vulnerabilities that can entail. Resultant pieces are, at times, playful, while at others can be emotive or thought provoking.

The miniature as a conceptual framework has become a focus of my current practice; the meaning of which has evolved over a series of projects. Initially it emerged in response to the conditions of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease with the creation of a 1/12th scale model of a care home, conveying contraction in relation to mental capacity and physical space"- Claire Tindale