Weaving Goodbye is the title of exhbition at Atkins

AN EXHIBITION fusing Hinckley’s heritage with contemporary art has opened at the Atkins Gallery.

“Weaving Goodbye” displays the work of artist Julie Ridington, who has been working on a project to capture the area’s industrial past through the medium of sculpture, photography and fine art.

The free exhibition, which runs until March 18, acknowledges the gradual decline of the hosiery trade in Hinckley over the past decades and explores the theme of nowredundant spaces which still have traces of their former use.

The photography in the exhibition captures the former factories in their disused state with some that are now demolished, like Sketchley Dyeworks.

There are also photographic contributions from Hinckley and District Museum, the Atkins Family and former hosiery workers.

The exhibition also includes unique charcoal drawings inspired by the illustrations in the book “The Cradle and Home of the Hosiery Trade 1640-1940” published in 1940 by W Pickering and Sons, with the Foreword written by Ernest Clive Atkins.

Colonel Atkins was battalion commander in the Leicestershire Regiment based in Ireland during the Easter Uprising (1916) and a member of the Atkins Family.

Councillor Jan Kirby, Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council’s arts champion, said: “This exhibition gives everyone the opportunity to learn about the industrial past, history and heritage of trade in Hinckley through sculpture, art and photography. I look forward to visiting the next exhibition.”