Moon Landing: composer Helen Caddick and textile artist Margo Selby collaborate on an immersive cross-genre piece for Collect 2024

Margo Selby's Moon Landing hanging in the Stamp stairwell at Somerset House for Collect 2024

Last night (29 February 2024) we were at Collect, the Crafts Council's international fair for contemporary craft and design at Somerset House, currently celebrating its 20th anniversary. A visual and tactile feast, one work stood out for its cross-genre use of music. Moon Landing by textile artist and designer Margo Selby is a 16m long woven art-work (presented at Collect by Cynthia Corbett Gallery) that is presented hanging down the centre of the historic Stamp Staircase. The project is a cross-genre collaboration as Selby's weaving (her first site-specific installation) is inspired by a new piece by composer Helen Caddick on 29 February there were performances of Caddick's piece, with the composer conducting, beneath the art work.

Moon Landing: Helen Caddick & musicians
in the stairwell beneath Margo Selby's piece

Caddick and Selby worked together for over a year on the project, interlinking music and weaving, elements of the final woven textile being inspired both by the look of the notes on the page and the sound of the music, whilst Caddick's writing uses elements from weaving in its inspiration.

But the primal element in the whole work is the little known story of how women from the Navajo nation and women from other traditions used their traditional skills in intricate weaving to create the integrated circuits and memory cores used for the the Moon landing. It was Navajo women who wove the integrated circuits!

Caddick's piece is written for strings, two harps, two violins and two cellos. The use of strings and the number of instruments having a significance relating to the weaving, whilst the music itself with its repeated, quasi-minimalistic motifs and a series of steady rhythmic underpinnings, has an underlying regularity that evokes weaving. 

We were lucky to hear the work live, but throughout the fair (which runs from 1 to 3 March) there are headphones available so the visitors can get the full immersive experience. 

Helen Caddick's Moon Landing is also available via BandCamp.

Moon Landing_Process Film 2024 from Margo Selby on Vimeo.