'A Textile Narrative of John Edgar Bell, Conscientious Objector' jury selected by peer review for the Arts and Humanities Research Council Image Gallery

The images in this exhibition are part of a research project exploring the influence of content, cloth and context on viewer perceptions of textiles. The textiles were developed to create a visual narrative about the experiences of John Edgar Bell, a Quaker and conscientious objector in WW1. The textile panels are based on the family at the start of the war, the imprisonment of the objector, and the continued hostility towards conscientious objectors and their families that continued into WW2 and beyond. The panels were located in galleries, museums, churches and corporate spaces to collate viewer responses to the work in different contexts. The images in this exhibition show inscriptions and drawings from conscientious objector’s cells at Richmond Castle, visual work undertaken to construct the image-based narrative, and details from the final textile installations.