Chloe Benham

Screen printed textile samples sat alongside pigmented bacteria.

Chloe Benham is a multi-disciplinary textile designer, specialising in print, with a high regard for craftsmanship in design, based in London.

As a printmaker who loves their craft with a strong focus on sustainability, Chloe’s exploration has been understanding her relationship with print and detaching from the established dependence on synthetic dyes. She is exploring the benefits of living colour systems, which can provide an alternative to the environmentally harmful practices caused by the textile dye industry. Building on her extensive knowledge of colour and dyes, this investigation has re-conceptualised and reacquainted her process with colour and love for her craft, whilst modernising traditional print techniques.

Alongside this research, Chloe is a co-director of SustainLab at the Royal College of Art, which has informed her practice and allowed her to connect with likeminded individuals in sharing ideas towards more conscious design choices.

Awards

Haberdashers Textiles Scholarship 2021 & 2022, re-awarded in 2022 for my work at The Royal College of Art.

RCA x Logitech Grand Challenge Finalist 2021: New Economic Model for the Ocean.

Finalist for the Batsford Prize 2018, Applied Art category.

Exhibitions

RCA SustainLab, LEGACY, 2023, Hockney Gallery.

Premiere Vision, 2020, with Arts University Bournemouth.

New Designers, 2020, Online Show Case.

London Print Fair, 2018, with Arts University Bournemouth.

Microbial Hues - A Language of Colour and Control

The demand for colour in textiles is continual. In January 2023 I completed a microbiology course with ASCUS labs in Edinburgh, which guided me in understanding how living colour organisms operate. ‘Microbial Hues’ explores the possibilities of living colour systems in presenting alternatives to the pervasive dependence on harmful synthetic dyes, providing a circular source of colour production.

The project aims to modernise traditional print techniques with regenerative systems of colour that are produced with far less water and energy and without hazardous chemicals. I have presented the potential of a commercially viable and scalable structure of colour production utilising microorganisms.

The focus lies on the colour production of bacterial dyes, but my objective, in general, concentrates on the aesthetics, showing the potential of intentionally designed patterns from mixing bacterial and plant dyes, where design is at the forefront.

Screen printed silk using pigmented bacterial dyes (Arthrobacter Polychromogenes, Serratia Marcescens) and plant based dye (Logwood).

Arthrobacter Polychromogenes growing in Petri dishes.

Acrylic painting of Amygdala.

Anatomical T1 image highlighting the Amygdala, where fear is located in the brain.

Who Really is in Control?

Due to the unpredictability of research projects, this process has fed into my exploration around control. Continuously striving for precision within my work nurtures a perception of maintaining control. However, this persistent high attention to detail is not maintainable and deviating from this practice can become destabilising. Yet I have found this project to be almost therapeutic in disrupting this perceived sense of control. I have researched neurological conditions around fear and anxiety to understand how this is communicated in the brain and depicted through shape and colour to the viewer in scan images.

‘Microbial Hues’ begins to question who really is in control, the human, the bacteria, the material, or the colour?