Material gains from a stellar cast of artists

New Lanark is a fitting venue for this touring show of textiles designed by artists. The cotton mills were founded in 1786 and further developed by the social reformer Robert Owen and became a model of enlightened thinking about the working conditions of adults and children.

A floor of one of the main mill buildings, complete with original ceramic floor, has been given over to exhibition space. Large and flexible, it makes the ideal venue for this colourful, vibrant document of the world of textiles, fashion and art from 1910 to the mid-1970s. In the 1950s, the New York company Fuller Fabrics produced a line of prints in conjunction with Dufy, Picasso, Miró, Chagall and Léger. Nearer home, the Edinburgh Weavers studio worked with Victor Vasarely and Marino Marini. For many artists it was a way to make their work accessible to a wider public. This type of commercial work was also often well paid.

Key to these collaborations was the Institute of Contemporary Art’s 1953 exhibition, Painting into Textiles, which included work by Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Henry Moore. This forms one of several sizeable displays, roughly divided by decade, showing the rich interplay between the artist and textile trade. The artist’s work, in the form of long lengths of material or clothing, against vividly coloured backgrounds, is usually readily recognisable.

In the 1960s, Andy Warhol worked with Stehli Silks, who had produced a well-known series of Americana in the 1920s. Warhol gave several rolls of fabric, with food-related motifs, to the New York restaurant owner Stephen Bruce who also owned a fashion business. Rare examples of Warhol’s work, in the form of ice cream cone designs and a silk blouse with shocking pink toffee apples, are a highlight.

Although the exhibition design is engaging, there’s little sense of how the collaborations worked. How did the motifs that ended up printed on these long lengths of cotton actually get there? What was the artist’s starting point? Who initiated the collaborative process and how did it unfold? Although the resulting fabrics were used for a variety of purposes, you’d be forgiven for thinking most were destined to be women’s clothing, and dresses at that. There are too many mannequins and too few panels that relate the artists’ work to the specifics of the textile industry but if you are looking for a visual treat, rather than in-depth art-historical analysis, this is the show for you.

Box office 01555 661345 to Apr 29