Blackburn crochet expert's giant doily helps win Turner Prize

ITV News' Anna Youssef spoke to Rachael about how it feels to see her work in a Turner Prize-winning installation.


A crochet expert hopes the five metre wide doily she was commissioned to create will make people "recognise crochet as an art", after it made up part of a Turner Prize winning art installation.

Rachael Mills, who leads crochet classes in Blackburn and owns her own business, was contacted by artist Jasleen Kaur in 2022 to create an ornamental doily mat as part of her exhibition in Glasgow; Alter Altar.

Rachael said: "She phoned me to make the doily and gave me just a photograph of a six inch doily."

The installation, which focused on Kaur's experience growing up in Glasgow's Sikh community, featured the doily thrown over her father's first car: a red vintage Ford Escort.

Rachael, 56, said the doily required 67 balls of cotton yarn took around three months to complete.

She said: "It had to cover the car so it had to be quite huge. I used to take it in the pub down the road and lay it on the dance floor just to take a photo and make sure the pattern was working."

A doily is a small, decorative mat typically made of fabric or paper. According to Kaur, the doily represents "the legacies of Empire, cotton and migration from ex-colonies to British mills after the second world war."

In the installation, the doily Rachael designed is draped over the red ford escort. Credit: PA Images

The red Ford Escort represents the poverty in which Kaur grew up, in which just owning a car was seen as a status symbol.

At a ceremony on Tuesday 3 December the installation won the Turner Prize, which celebrates a British visual artist under the age of 50.

Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre, who sits on the judging panel said Jasleen sees the vehicle as a “representation of her dad’s first car and his migrant desires” and it “blasted snippets of uplifting pop songs referencing freedom and liberation throughout the space”.

At the age of 38, Jasleen Kaur is the youngest ever artist to win the prize and will take home £40,000 along with the accolade.

Rachael runs her own crochet business in Blackburn.

For Rachael, it is enough to know the art of crocheting is being recognised by the art world.

She said: "Most people don't put art and crochet together but it is an art form."

The Turner Prize, named after the British painter JMW Turner, is the most high-profile award in British art and this year it celebrates its 40th anniversary.

Previous winners include Anish Kapoor, Steve McQueen, Gillian Wearing, Antony Gormley, Grayson Perry, Jeremy Deller, Helen Marten and Veronica Ryan.

Alter Altar is currently on display at the Tate Britain in London until 16 February 2025.


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