Invisible Threads: Women, Textiles and Labour in Harrison's 'Homeworkers'

In the mid-1970s, British artist Margaret Harrison embarked on a research project that took her into the private homes of some of London’s most exploited workers. Working closely with union organiser Helen Eadie, Harrison became involved with the National Campaign for Homeworkers in London, which fought for the rights of pieceworkers, the majority of whom were working-class women employed by the textile industry. Isolated inside their homes, homeworkers struggled to organise for higher pay rates, benefits and labour protections. Over the course of several years, Harrison committed herself to a collaborative, research-intensive process that resulted in Homeworkers, a multidisciplinary artwork encompassing collage, drawing, photography and interviews. While many other left-wing British artists of the era focused on factory-centred labour struggles, Harrison attended to a marginalised mode of production that destabilised binary divisions between industrial and domestic labour.

In my talk, I trace Harrison’s research-intensive process, and the different collaborations that informed her artwork. I argue that, through its use of everyday objects and a documentary approach, Harrison’s work materialises the “invisible threads” connecting the home and the factory. By situating the domestic as an overlooked site of the labour struggle, Homeworkers reveals how, historically, the industrial workplace has always been inextricably tied to the private household.

Image credit: Margaret Harrison, Homeworkers, 1977, acrylic paint, printed paper, linen, graphite, woollen scarf, 220 x 244 cm. Digital image courtesy of Tate (T13631) © Margaret F. Harrison.