Seamstress, Reimagining Industrial Migratory

About this work

Seamstress is the second major tableau in The Exiles series, made in 2022.

A woman stands alone in a dark industrial sewing workshop, her figure caught in the glow of a single fluorescent strip light. Around her, the space is dense with machinery — cutting tables, sewing machines, bolts of fabric. Dresses in vivid prints hang from the corrugated metal ceiling. On the far wall, a framed portrait catches the light.

The woman who reads a letter in Dayshift returns here, connecting the domestic act of correspondence with the industrial space of labour.

Production

Many women in the South Asian community worked in sewing factories under conditions that were deeply unscrupulous in terms of fair payment and health and safety. The image holds together tenderness and exploitation — a private, still moment set against the mechanical repetition of industrial work.

Awards

Seamstress was entered alongside Dayshift into the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Photography Prize Exhibition, for which Billy was awarded First Prize.

Exhibition history

Shown as part of [Traveller, Your Footprints] at New Art Exchange, Nottingham (September 2022 – January 2023) and The Exiles at The New Art Gallery Walsall (November 2022 – February 2023).