Conversation and Encounter. TSA Symposium 2014. (original) (raw)
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Fusion Journal, 2020
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Spun and spooled, woven and worn, saturated in pixels and pigments – textile interactions hum with the gestures and stories of their makers and wearers. Deeply tied to the migrations of people, power, and knowledge across continents and time, fabrics encourage a multi-directional reading of our society. Women have played a significant role in this language, which predates the written word and is entangled in socio-economic dynamics. This case study documents the non-linear exhibition concept development for Women Designers and Textile Design, opening at the Centre de Design in Montreal in November 2023. Women’s multidimensional designs are presented through a composition of circular installations, rooted in the gestures which transform threads. These reference spinning textile rhythms and rotations, but also to the circularity of sustainable textile practices. The exhibition concept draws on research in traditions of communication, fashion and textile exhibition practice, as well as historical and design research. This constellation presents historical breakthroughs in the field; the links between tradition and innovation; the transmission of emotion; and advanced experimentation. It ranges from the tactile to the intangible, from 2D to 3D, from material to virtual, from the decorative to the political. Tactile, luscious and olfactive narratives of disciplined natural fibres awakened the senses of civilizations, ensured non-verbal transmission of rituals and traditions, and redefined art. Textiles authored by women lead the way for computational innovation and bio-fabrication. Cloth harnesses knowledge, as well as aesthetic and emotive properties. Exuberant prints, meditative repetition of stitches, the uproar of quilts questioning world disorder – all tell stories and unravel emotions. The display concept includes a research library, workshops encouraging tactile interactions, as well as multimedia recordings, including a podcast. The exploratory study contributes to the research of textile poetics with multi-directional exhibition readings.
FRESH MATERIAL: NEW AUSTRALIAN TEXTILE ART
FRESH MATERIAL: NEW AUSTRALIAN TEXTILE ART, 2021
Textile-based arts have long occupied vexed territory, characterised as being between binaries such as high and low art, amateur or professional practice, and craft or hobby. As a genre, it is often seen to sit on the fault lines of fine art, fashion and dress. In this ‘and/or’ space, textile art affects a kind of rupture to its attendant binaries where it can eschew rigidly defined classifications through its tendency toward cross-pollination. And, although it holds a well-documented position at the sidelines of the art historical canon, textile art has the distinct advantage of crossing class divisions even while being implicated within its own histories of gendered and racialised labour. Its broad range of mediums, techniques and processes make textile art a genuinely democratic form of material language. The far-reaching historical and cultural entanglements of textile art stretch back thousands of years. The story of textile arts is, quite simply, the story of human civilisation. Therefore, it has been subject to assimilation and adaptation, economics and politics, power, and the heavy legacy of empire.
Postcolonial Textiles: negotiating dialogue
Cross/Cultures: postcolonial studies across the disciplines, 2013
It is curious – considering the ability of the textile to capture and convey cultural, national, and individual identity – that textiles have enjoyed little attention in postcolonial studies. This essay will consider what the American artist Elaine Reichek has referred to as the “politics of thread.” By this I mean debates about gender, skill, and the domestic that contribute, consciously or subconsciously, to our expectation of the textile’s meaning, used here with particular attention to themes of the postcolonial. Within the hierarchies of power that rule the visual arts, textiles are often experienced as a marginal discipline. The market value of art made in cloth tends to be lower than that made with the conventional materials of fine art, such as the framed canvas of painting. This is ironic, when we remember that painting for the most part resides on a textile; the painter’s canvas is cloth. But the familiarity, be it of the canvases under conventional paintings or, more commonly, the textiles that clothe our bodies and domestic lives, means that they are ultimately common. This familiarity means that textiles tend to be overlooked, rather than scrutinized. This essay will attempt to counter this with a close reading of visual art created by Elaine Reichek, Yinka Shonibare, Susan Stockwell, Nicholas Hlobo, and, most recently, Studio Formafantasma, and their works that address themes of the postcolonial through the textile.
'Textiles: Some Visible and Invisible Connections in Contemporary Visual Art Installation Practice'
Textiles have traditionally encompassed both culturally specific and trans-cultural links. In all cultures, rich symbolism arises from the use of textiles in their domestic and ceremonial roles. In this paper I will discuss how in a postmodern context, artists have conveyed powerful social and political comments through their use of traditional textile media and techniques. In the works of these artists, the messages are communicated through a soft 'feminine' medium. In itself, this creates a paradoxical situation as the traditional, familiar associations of textiles are juxtaposed with the conflicting reality of the artist's message. In a postmodern context, textile elements can be used in installation art to stimulate the haptic senses which are of vital importance in the interpretation of space and materials. Textiles can significantly increase the viewer/participant's response due to the familiarity of the visible and the emotionally-charged invisible connections inherent in the media. These associations can be exploited to effectively absorb the viewer into the haptic experience, encouraging an awareness by the individual of the environment adjoining their body. Examination of a small number of recent works by some European and American artists will identify how certain visible and invisible connections to textile materials can be used by artists to enhance the concepts and subtexts of their works. My doctoral research focuses on how the haptic and visual qualities and traditions of fibre and digital media can be combined in installation art to create metaphors that address social issues of the twenty-first century. In my studio research over the past few years, I have discovered a number of material attributes which influence the haptic responses of those who experience my textile installation works. My work entitled Cerebral Viscosity (2009) 1 is an installation of fifty square metres of handembroidered textile veils and fluorescent lights. Through its materials, the installation references the flimsy and transient nature of life and memory, and explores the space that exists between materiality and reality. The abstract imagery and shapes encourage dialogue between the viewer and the work as they allude to objects and connections between people rather than explicitly describing them. The ethereal nature of the transparent fabric infers a body or skin-like form and its vulnerable and ephemeral nature. The textiles' sculptural qualities, discernible in the way the work hangs, suggest the body's absence or presence. Both skin and fabric are sewn with thread and the thread itself is a metaphor as it symbolises connections between memories, people and times. What this description of my installation does not mention, however, are the viewers' bodily or haptic responses to the work. Jennifer Fisher states that 'the haptic sense, comprising the tactile, kinaesthetic and proprioceptive senses, describes aspects of engagement that are qualitatively distinct from the capabilities of the visual sense.' 2 Many people have walked through my installation experiencing its tactile nature and for some, this level of interaction has not been enough. The responses of some of my viewers have been such that they felt compelled to interact with the work by wrapping themselves in the veils, thus experiencing a more tactile and physical engagement with the work. While I had considered the haptic senses in relation to my work for 1 This installation can be viewed at URL:
Material-aesthetic collaborations: making-with the ecosystem
CoDesign- International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts , 2020
This article reflects on the conceptual frameworks central to the project Phenomenal Dress and aspects of its methodological approach and realisation. Through a localised, practice-led process, informed by material thinking, posthuman theory from Māori perspectives and processes of ‘making-with’ we collaborated with the environment through relational entanglement. Engaging with nonhuman phenomena, cultural and scientific experts, we developed mediated materials and textile surfaces as new forms of dress. These were not functional, fashionable products, they were matter flows, formed at a junction of diverse perspectives and collaborative processes. This process recognised dress as material-aesthetic activations, opening pathways towards co-emergent understanding. Through this approach, the ecosystem was recognised as the primary collaborator, repositioning human and more-than-human relationships. This strategy was informed by mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge and ways of knowing), through perspectives of kaitiakitanga (stewardship) and deeper relationship with the lifeworld through acts of sensing, noticing, making, and following. The methodology was grounded in an ontological shift away from human-centredness, focussing on matter as vital collaborator and place as habitat where interconnections between things could be explored and articulated. These conceptual framings are discussed in relation to artefacts and assemblages produced through this collaborative process.