The Fabric Left to Us

Valentine and Emeline are in the space next door to Theatre Deli, discovering the legacy of textile artist Melanie Heneke. Mel left her art materials to her children when she died 11 years ago and last year, her daughter Ruth entrusted Emeline these materials. Peek into the room where we uncover the precious dyes, pigments and silks that Mel used when she worked as a fabric designer. This installation is our documentation of the process of dyeing and printing with these pigments and silks. Through active and embodied research, we ask ourselves: what can we learn from this artist? How do materials hold memory? What is the value of experimentation today?

Ruth and I met in 2013, in our first few weeks of University in Edinburgh. We were both on the same English Lit course, but looking back now, I wonder if it was our love of colour, art and our South-East London upbringings that solidified our friendship. It was in these conversations that Ruth first told me about her mum, Mel, who worked as a textile artist for many years and lived in Peckham, London. A strict mum from Cape Town, SA, Mel had surrounded her kids with the fierce warmth of vibrant colours, her fabrics, friends’ artworks and mouth-wateringly good food. Despite her invitation to visit, I never met Mel. She was diagnosed with cancer that November, and though she responded well to treatment at first, the throat cancer came back. Mel passed away on the 23rd July 2015, back home in Cape Town surrounded by her family.

In the 10 and half years since that summer, Ruth cooked us Mel’s favourite curries, told us childhood stories, snippets of family history, showed us her prints, artworks and fabrics, and over time I got a feel for Mel’s vigorous and voracious attitude to life. It was only last year did I see Mel’s designs in the flesh. In the flurry of moving boxes, as Ruth prepared the family home for sale, we had time to look at some beautifully vibrant coats Mel had made in the 80s. Ruth also entrusted me with two big boxes of Mel’s art materials, which included the silks and dyes that she used when working as a textile designer before she had children. This gift instilled in me a sense that I did not want the materials to disappear into the mouth of this hungry artist, but pay tribute to Mel somehow.

     Mel (R) with Maeve and Margot in Cape Town 1950s.

Mel in the 1950s.   
                                       

Mel was born in February 1954 Cape Town, South Africa. She grew up in Athlone, a suburb of Cape Town with her elder sister, Maeve and parents Margot and Mike. Their families had mixed heritages including Cape Malay, Xhosa and French roots. Her father, Mike, was a doctor who saw patients in his surgery at the front of the house. He was intent on his daughters pursuing an academic education. He was the son of a headteacher who was one of the first “coloured” persons to graduate from University of Cape Town; his father had done everything for him to study at all costs, even sending him to Aberdeen to study medicine when he could no longer continue in CT due to racial-segregation. Mel and her sister were involved in anti-government activism as teenagers in the 60s- 70s- Ruth and her brothers Lewis and Barney grew up hearing tales of what it was like to face tear gas and water cannons whilst protesting for civil rights. It was also at this point that she started making her own clothes and pursuing art.

Mike’s dictatorial parenting style and Mel’s rebellious response culminated in a huge fight that left Mel unwelcome in the family home when she was 17. She was forced to move in with her new boyfriend. Soon after she began an art degree at University of Cape Town and supported herself by working at a local KFC.

In 1975 aged 21, Mel and her boyfriend were raided by the police. Someone had reported that an interracial couple were living at their address – he was white and she was “coloured” and so by living together as a couple they were breaking both the “Group Areas Act” and “Immorality Act”- apartheid legislation that banned inter-racial co-living and “conjugal relations”. They were both arrested. Graham had a British passport and was immediately deported. Mel described being offered a choice between five years’ imprisonment or removal of citizenship. She had never left South Africa and had £20 (equivalent at the time) when boarding a plane to Heathrow in November 1975. Mel described searching through the yellow pages after landing, hoping for a recognisable name – any distant relatives who’d previously sought refuge? - and found a number for a Louis Maurice, a great aunt’s ex-husband. He invited her to stay with him in Swiss Cottage before finding her feet. The UK granted her 6 months’ amnesty – so to remain she would have to marry a British citizen. Here, she reached out to Graham, who was doing a residency in Lemington Spa. 

Mel and Louis Maurice, 1978, London.       

Mel teaching, or at Art School in 1983, London.

Graham and Mel soon married to avoid her deportation back to SA. She worked multiple jobs to support herself and pay the international fees to study textiles at Camberwell Art School, where she graduated in 1980. After graduating Mel worked as a textile designer and clothes-maker throughout the 1980s – selling patterns to fashion houses and garments at craft fairs. She drew on artists such as Matisse and Kandinsky for example. You can see a similar energy to Kandinsky in Mel’s work - the way she bought colours and forms together in rhythmic and dynamic compositions.

Alongside her fabric designing, Mel did a PGCE at Goldsmiths and then worked as an Art and History of Art teacher at a secondary comprehensive in Croydon. By the mid-80s her and Graham had divorced and she had met Dominic. Her and Dominic were married in 1988 and Lewis was born in 1989. She then decided to stop working in design and teaching and focus on being a mother. Her second son Barnaby came along in 1992 and Ruth two years later. Then in 1997, when they had started school and nursery, Mel went to train as a chef. Ruth describes her mum’s relationship to cooking as a real continuation of her professional art practice, in the way that tastes, colours, and combination of elements all spoke to Mel’s particular synesthetic aliveness. 

Photo Negative of Mel’s designs (scanned and restored on Photoshop).

Mel on her wedding day, her outfit was her own design.

Mel re-established her artistic practice in 2003, when she founded the Sparrow Art Circle with some friends, a collective of women artists who joined together to create and sell work to raise money for the Sparrow School Foundation in Johannesburg, a school dedicated to supporting children affected by HIV. This group was created in the long tradition of women’s making circles, aimed at developing and re-discovering artistic skills in a convivial, supportive atmosphere. Much in the vein of Mel’s early work, the Circle’s creations included painted fabrics, prints and printed cards and watercolours, alongside baking, knitting and container planting. She continued the group until she was diagnosed with cancer in 2013.

This January, Theatre Deli put out a call for artists to display an artwork in their street-facing window venue in Leadenhall. Valentine Gigandet and I had the idea to collaborate. We were keen to make a textile-based installation together, as we both have an interest in working with fabrics in design.

Valentine and I met in 2019. We were studying performance design in Cardiff, and I helped on a project that Valentine was running, which was about story-telling through making rag dolls and puppetry. In 2020 we also worked together in the breakdown department for a TV series in Bridgend. A huge part of breaking-down is the process of dyeing garments. Fabrics are tinted to specific colours by the dyers before being brought to the workrooms, and then bought back to be dyed again and worked into in order to give the costumes the lived-in and worn effects they need. Valentine learnt the long and complex process of dying all variety fabrics with different types of dyes, and shared with me some of these techniques. So, when I unwrapped Mel’s silk and dyes that Mel and Ruth had kept all these years, I immediately thought of Valentine – could we experiment and try out the dyes together? Could we make an installation with them and tell a little part of Mel’s story here?

On Thursday the 18th of March, Valentine and I set up a studio in Theatre Deli’s “Next Door” space. We had three days to experiment with Mel’s dyes, printing inks and a roll of white silk. We were keen to explore colour, form and then be guided by intuition for the stage of pattern making. The window provided a good framework – how could we drape the fabric in ways that would stand out from the street? Which colours would complement the busyness of Leadenhall and draw attention beyond the reflections in the glass? The window is about 2.5 tall by 3 meters wide and has curved corners, enjoys good footfall, with people walking by from both directions. This gave us the idea to hang the cloth side-on rather than flat against the glass and hang the fabric at different heights to allow the colours to catch the light from various angles through the glass.

Valentine and I started boiling up the dyes and mixing colours to see which tones and vibrancies we were interested in and what would work best from outside-in. It was a lovely surprise to find that after all these years, the dyes still had potency. Perhaps a little less potent than when they were first manufactured, but still pretty good! Seeing the fabric absorb the colour and take on a shade was electrifying and so joyful. The silk was also incredible. Silk has a natural sheen when it’s dry, due to the prism-like structure of the fibres. It’s rare to work with such precious materials, and with ones that have an added significance of being passed down. We chose a combination of five colours that we were drawn to most. Then decided to keep one length of fabric white and paint forms with our chosen colours to link the whole piece together. When figuring out what to paint on the white fabric, we thought of drawing the surrounding buildings and using these as inspiration for the patterns on the dyed fabric. I think this is where Mel’s influence came in; it felt closer to Mel’s practice to go with more abstract, flowing and organic shapes. 

Emeline and Valetine making samples, Next Door, Theatre Deli, March 2026.

On the Friday evening and Saturday morning we prepped the space to paint our long stretch of white silk. Having done a couple of experiments the day before, we had identified a few motifs, shapes, and techniques that we wanted to carry through and try again – but we did not plan the drawing, preferring to work spontaneously together. It was exciting to work like this, the fabric laid out between us, moving from one end of the silk to the other, pressing the dyes into the fabric, watching teal, yellow, pink and purple forms spread out against the white. We noticed how thinner delicate lines defined larger segments of paler colours, how they also bridged the gaps and integrated unpainted with painted sections. Attuning to each other’s movements and the shapes we were making required a focus where even our breath was involved. The inhalations mirrored the anticipation of an unknown brushstroke, the exhalations the relief of forms coming together, or a pause when considering a ‘mistake’ or unexpected shape. This rhythm related to that of the installation and dyeing processes. Dipping the fabrics in and out of pots, pegging them out to dry, dipping them again, hanging them up in the window, then bringing them down and then trying it all again in a different way created a connection with Mel’s own processes. 

We had quite a few moments of doubt in the short period we had together – how to make something in only three days, could we make it meaningful, or good, or beautiful? All natural questions but stifling and pressurising. It was during these choice hours of spontaneous painting that I learnt about the irrelevance of these questions when actually making – all we had was our preparation and the present moment in which we could either make a mark or not. We had to really let go, slow down and trust our methods and embrace the unknown. Shared words of encouragement to each other helped a lot, “I like this…that is beautiful…oh that didn’t work…this worked! …can you do that again on this bit please…”. In this way we were able to respond to what emerged and be present with each other, the dyes, the silk and the space. 

The installation viewed from the inside. With dyes, sketches, samples on the shelf below.

It’s been so nice to share the installation with friends and strangers, but especially with Ruth. As part of this residency, we delved into photos from Mel’s life, and also contacted friends and family who could shine some more light on her childhood, time at art school, and work as an artist and teacher. Despite the installation being temporary, this reaching out and connecting to Mel’s past through making, feels like we are sharing in a long-lasting and life-affirming reserve of creative energy.

Written by Emeline Beroud with contributions from Ruth Heneke Eliot and Valentine Gigandet. Edited by Elizabeth Beroud.

Thank you to Theatre Deli for having us. The Fabric Left to Us is on until the 9th of April.

Theatre Deli's Next Door project is generously supported by The Eastern City Bid