“. . . resistance, reconciliation, remembrance, revival, revelry and radical bodies”
“Textiles are like a trojan horse, they are soft in nature and are often associated with ideas of docile and traditional femineity. Because of this they are perfectly placed to disrupt establishment and carry complex and subversive messaging,” Rebecca Evans – co-curator with Leigh Robb – tells me about Radical Textiles, which draws together works by more than 150 artists, designers and activists, with works from public and private collections alongside several new commissions.
A major exhibition, with resistance, reconciliation, remembrance, revival, revelry and radical bodies as the key themes, Robb – AGSA’s Curator of Contemporary Art – came to Evans – AGSA’s Curator of Decorative Art and Design – a few years ago with the idea of looking at the rise of textiles in contemporary practice. “We quickly realised that we needed to expand the exhibition concept to include work from the past,” Evans says, “especially the textile work of William Morris, a radical and revivalist work, through his firm Morris & Co.”
Morris & Co. (manufacturer, London, operating 1861–1940), Edward Burne-Jones (designer, born Birmingham, England 1833, died London 1898), John Henry Dearle (designer of floral ground, born London 1859, died London 1932), The Adoration of the Magi, 1900–02; designed 1887, London, wool, silk, 251.2 × 372.5cm; Morgan Thomas Bequest Fund 1917, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
With AGSA having one of the most significant collections of Morris & Co. material in the world, as well as a significant holding of textiles from the Adelaide arts and crafts movement and – more recently – tapestry from the craft revival of the 1970s, both global and local narratives find thread-through here. “Radical Textiles is an international exhibition,” Evans says, “but very much weaves together threads from the fabric of South Australia’s past and present.” SA’s progressive-politics-through-textiles also being a recurring theme.
Here, we have threads that, in isolation, may seem powerfully distinct, but when put into conversation with each other give rise to experiences that take us from the specific to the universal. This is a real achievement. “Rebecca and I initially talked about the relationship between the hand-made and the machine,” Robb explains, “between time and technology and how we would intertwine these examples throughout the exhibition from the industrial revolution to the post-digital.
“We selected hand-made tapestries by Morris & Co., master weavers like Liz Williamson, Kay Lawrence, Pru La Motte, to works made with the Australian Tapestry Workshop, to contemporary artists like Blake Griffiths, Hannah Cooper, Michelle Driver or Lucia Dohrmann, interested in un-weaving. The way artists have been using the language of weaving and the warp and weft but subverting it, is exciting.”
1) Sally Smart, Performance/Punokawan/Chout (The Choreography of Cutting) (detail), 2017, cotton, textiles, synthetic embroidery thread, aluminium, wooden sticks, pins, screenprinted and synthetic polymer paint elements, 300 × 1070cm. Gift of John and Jane Ayers, Elma Christopher, Tracey and Michael Whiting through the Art Gallery of South Australia Contemporary Collectors 2017, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. © the artist | 2) Pierre Mukeba, Ride to church, 2018, fibre-tipped pen, synthetic polymer paint and applique on canvas, 320 × 424cm. Gift of the Art Gallery of South Australia Contemporary Collectors 2019, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. © the artist | 3) Pink shorts worn by South Australian Premier Don Dunstan, c.1972, polyester, 30 × 48cm. History Trust of South Australia. Photograph: Mark Eckermann | 4) Sarah Contos, Sarah Contos Presents: The Long Kiss Goodbye, 2016, Sydney, screenprint on linen, canvas and lamé, digital-printed fabrics and various found fabrics, PVC, poly-fil, glass, ceramic and plastic beads, thread, artists’ gloves, 610 × 330 × 25cm. Gift of the James and Diana Ramsay Foundation for the Ramsay Art Prize 2017, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. © the artist. Courtesy the artist, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and Station Gallery, Melbourne
The curators’ intention to showcase works from a range of different disciplines by designers, visual artists, crafts people, activists and community organisers is enriched by the curators’ own engagement and observation of exciting, artist-creation practices. “When I’d worked with David Noonan in 2020 for the Adelaide Biennial he was working with Flanders Tapestries on their jacquard loom,” Robb says, “I was also seeing a number of international artists including Kiki Smith and Grayson Perry, for whom weaving was not previously a part of their practice; however, these new tapestry technologies have become a significant wellspring of inspiration to them, as well as a driver for the resurgence of the tapestry medium in contemporary art in the twenty-first century.”
1) Romance Was Born, Quilted sleep jacket – Chantilly from Whispering Angel Resort, 2017. Collection, 2016, Darlinghurst, New South Wales, silk satin; Gift of an anonymous donor through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2016, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. © Romance Was Born | 2) Kait James (Wadawurrung people), Invaders, Game Over, 2019, cotton, 74.6 × 45.7cm. © the artist. Photograph: Guy Ivison. Courtesy the artist and Neon Parc, Melbourne | 3) Sonja Carmichael (Ngugi/Quandamooka people), and Elisa Jane Carmichael (Ngugi/Quandamooka people), Wagari djagun (Carry country), 2020, cyanotype on cotton, 279 × 275cm. Acquisition through Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art supported by BHP 2021, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. © the artists. Photograph: Grant Hancock. Courtesy the artists and Onespace Gallery, Brisbane | 4) Various makers, AIDS Memorial Quilt Block 70, early 1990s, mixed-media textile, 360 × 364cm. SAMESH (South Australian Mobilisation + Empowerment for Sexual Health) and Thorne Harbour Health. Photograph: Grant Hancock
Taking Morris as a ‘starting point,’ to also draw on international, Australian and First Nations collections and encompass a range of lenses – i.e., feminist, queer and black – and genres – i.e., AIDS crisis memorials and protest banners, flags and patches – and in a space were the textiles and fashion on show are augmented by soft sculpture, photography and the moving image, on the surface the exhibition seems ambitious. But soak a while and you’ll see . . .
“The word radical means ‘Going to the root or origin; fundamental,’” Evans says. “The breath of disciplines is intentional as we didn’t want to preface one over the other.” An intentionality that gives space for each of us to find meaning for ourselves. In the words of Robb: “in this exhibition, Rebecca and I have realised that the zeitgeist is concepts around care, healing, connection and belonging in times of unrest, and textiles are the shared language for storytelling we need to make sense of things.”
Dr Joseph Brennan is a Lambda Literary Award-nominated author based in Tropical North Queensland.
Art Gallery of South Australia
23 November to 30 March 2025
Adelaide
Originally published in print – Art Almanac, December 2024 / January 2025 issue, pp. 28–30
