With These Hands

Admission charges apply: 

Free for Max Card holders, members of NMDC and Museums Association, and exhibition lenders.  

*Concessions include senior citizens (65+), students, registered unemployed people, disabled people (plus free entry for one carer). 

**Membership discount applies to Friends of the Laing and Art Fund members. 

To be eligible for discounts you must show proof of age/status/membership 

Purchase your tickets on the day, no need to pre-book. 

With These Hands explores the representation of craft in paintings, drawings, and prints. The process of making and mending by hand whether a domestic pastime, rural and semi-industrial labour, or essential war effort, is a persistent theme to which artists return. Yet these artworks are rarely straightforward observations of everyday activity. Instead, the act of making is used to symbolise personal and communal identity, leisure and work, tradition and progress.

Produced in Britain and Europe from the 1750s onwards, these images reflect a society undergoing immense change. The growth of industry, the reorganisation of the methods and places of work, the changing status of women and the conflicts of World War I and II all impacted the value placed on hand skill. Some artists were interested in capturing traditions – their works romanticising crafts they perceived as almost lost – while others were drawn to the atmosphere and activity of the workshop and factory.

With These Hands takes you from refined drawing rooms to weaving sheds, from a woodland saw pit to an inner city carpenter’s shop, and from country blacksmiths to industrial forges. It focuses particularly on the changing role of making in women’s lives, the relationship between craft and community, and its impact on our landscape. The exhibition features paintings and prints by artists including Mary Cassatt, G.F. Watts, Stanhope Forbes, Harold Knight, Evelyn Dunbar, and Ralph Hedley.

At a time when we are reassessing the importance of hand making, for mental health and environmental benefits, paintings and prints help us to understand our complex attitudes towards craft. The exhibition will bring together paintings and objects – quilts, embroidery, metalwork, wood carvings, ceramics and basketry – to explore both traditional techniques and contemporary approaches. Makers include C. R. Ashbee, Bernard Leach, Michael Cardew and local quilter Amy Emms.

Loans from Tate, V&A, Royal Academy of Arts, Imperial War Museums and regional galleries complement the strengths of North East Museums’ collections. Objects from the Shipley Art Gallery’s outstanding craft collections and the Discovery Museum’s textile collection are shown alongside paintings from the Laing.