(Photo Credit: Dominic Harris)
In August 2022, The Whitworth acquired ‘Chain Reactions’ (2021) for their permanent collection by textile artist Sarah-Joy Ford – marking the Whitworth’s first acquisition by an ‘out’ lesbian artist who references explicitly their sexuality within their work.
Sarah-Joy Ford is an artist and researcher who uses textiles to represent Queer histories and archives. Ford’s work explores lesbian community through quilting and textiles, subverting traditional practices and preconceptions around craft and textiles. The artist’s work can be described as a “digital quilt”, a mélange of both digital and traditional form, to achieve a ‘log cabin quilt’ style, emphasizing themes of domesticity, heart and community amongst women, both in traditional and contemporary senses.
Chain Reactions takes its name from the iconic ‘Chain Reaction’ which was the UK’s first lesbian S&M club in Vauxhall, London and like much of Sarah-Joy’s practice is a celebration of lesbian iconography, history and activism. Chain Reactions is a snapshot of Sarah-Joy’s research perspective, a dive into her inspirations and femme aesthetics, featuring imagery that she has plucked from her research into lesbian archives. These motifs thread throughout all her artwork as symbols of pride, community and memory.
Through her research and practice, Sarah-Joy uses quilting as a methodology to explore lesbian archives and histories, and Chain Reactions features the personal archive of Karen Fisch, an activist, archivist, ‘Rebel Dyke’ and Drag King, known for her ‘Frankie Sinatra’ Drag King persona and most recently, the Rebel Dykes documentary film. Created originally for the Rebel Dykes Art and Archives Exhibition, Chain Reactions connects pieces of lesbian archival history to form one towering quilt, which serves as a device for queer memory, activism and empowerment. The quilt shines a spotlight on hidden cultures, lesbian intimacies and legacy, originally to represent the underexposed lesbian communities in 1980’s London, of which Fisch was an integral part of.
(Photo Credit: Michael Pollard)
Amongst the embroidered images that adorn Chain Reactions is a central portrait of a leather jacket wearing Fisch, with ‘DYKE’ pasted across her chest, adapted from a photograph taken by photographer Lola Flash. Motorbikes, love making, handcuffs, leatherwear and a Labrys – a symbol adopted by 1970’s lesbian communities as a feminist symbol of strength and self-sufficiency make up some of the embroidered images on the artwork, all evocative symbols of lesbian culture and desire linked to Fisch and her community in 80’s London.
(Photo Credit: Michael Pollard)
The Whitworth houses one of the largest textile collections in the UK, yet Chain Reactions is a departure from some of the period styles in The Whitworth’s collection. With its bold emphasis on Queer and Lesbian community, Sarah-Joy uses quilting in particular as a means of communicating Queer history and identity and which also brings the art of quilting into contemporary art space. Ford’s perspective, practice and research across lesbian archives is truly unique and is a milestone of the ongoing ‘Queering the Whitworth’ project, which is helping to make the Whitworth’s collection more diverse.
(Photo Credit: Michael Pollard)
Blog Post by MA placement student Sean Young.
Listen to an audio description of Sarah-Joy Ford’s Chain Reactions II, written and recorded by (Un)Defining Queer participant Sean below:
Queering The Whitworth 
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