This material world is both sublime and subversive
Radical Textiles is as colourful and diverse as the myriad forms and expressions found across textile-oriented arts and crafts. InReview reviewer Katherine Tamiko looks at some of the highlights in an ambitious exhibition that surprises, inspires and delights.
Radical Textiles
Art Gallery of South Australia
Needlepoint and embroidery in Jane Austen’s time were meant for ladies of a certain class, occupying hands that never had to labour in fields or factories, adding to the list of accomplishments required to attract a suitable husband.
Quilting, crochet, knitting, sewing, cross-stitch and other textile crafts have traditionally been seen – particularly in Euro-centric cultures – as women’s work and of less value, seriousness or worthiness than the so-called “high” arts. The skills and creativity embodied in such work have often been overlooked, dismissed as mere decoration or as too tame.
It is all the more powerful, then, when such craft-based techniques provide a vehicle for activism, subversion or resistance; a kind of Trojan Horse, as curator Rebecca Evans (decorative arts and design) put it in the speech she shared with her exhibition co-curator Leigh Robb (contemporary art) at the Radical Textiles preview.
A pretty cross-stitch in pastel colours from the 2019 Stitch & Resist project may appear sweet and yielding from afar, but look closely at the message spelled out with needle and thread and it might sneak into your psyche to surprise, shock or even conquer.
Halfway down the stairs to AGSA’s lower galleries is Wadawurrung woman Kait James’s quartet of embroidery-edited 1970s and ’80s “Aboriginal calendar” souvenir tea towels: Invaders, Game Over (2019), Lucky Country (2020), Captain F**ker (2021) and Life’s Pretty Shitty without a Treaty (2022). They shout anti-colonial resistance in punch-needled neon-bright colours, echoing the imagery of commercialism and icons of popular culture with a brisk dose of Blak humour, an appetiser and a foretaste of the power of subversion that is felt throughout this exhibition.
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Kay Lawrence, Elaine Gardner, Women in Trade Unions banner, 1985–87, Adelaide, cotton, metal, 256.5 x 205.0cm; The Working Women’s Centre, SA Collection. © Kay Lawrence. Photo: Grant Hancock
Once in the lower galleries’ atrium, the monumental breadth of Radical Textiles is reflected in the large trade union banners adorning its vivid red walls. On loan from the unions themselves or from the State Library, some date from the 1880s while others are from a century later.
Occupying the vitrines nearby are small acts of “craftivism” created for Stitch & Resist, a year-long project organised by the Centre of Democracy (a collaboration between the History Trust of South Australia and the State Library) where community groups, organisations and members of the public were invited to create pieces in cross-stitch that expressed the most pressing issues of our time through messages of resistance and calls to action.
Judith Bampton’s Consent (2020), a ring box of navy-coloured velvet, is flipped open to reveal the word “NO” stitched into a bed of cream silk; Fayrouz Ajaka’s bookmark is woven with Arabic words that translate to We meditate, we hope tirelessly; Pauline Cockrill’s No One Is Too Small To Make a Difference depicts a school-aged Greta Thunberg holding her ‘Skolstrejk För Klimatet’ placard. These and other pieces generated during the Stitch & Resist project were also exhibited at Adelaide’s The Mill in 2021.
Pierre Mukeba, Ride to church, 2018, Adelaide, fibre-tipped pen, synthetic polymer paint and applique on canvas, 320.0 x 424.0cm; gift of AGSA Contemporary Collectors 2019. © Pierre Mukeba
There are old friends from AGSA’s permanent collection in these gallery spaces, such as Sera Waters’ exquisitely beaded and stitched Storied Sail Cloths (2022), the gentleness of the soft cream linen, caramel-coloured threads and shimmering gold seeds highlighting the harsh realities of colonisation. Pierre Mukeba’s young man in For Sale, on loan from the ARNDT collection, sits with pickaxe at the ready, staring out, sullen and cautious, while his Ride to Church, winner of the 2019 Ramsay Art Prize’s People’s Choice Award, hangs further along in the galleries.
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Rooms are grouped into overarching themes, with pieces also echoing one another between rooms in form, style or intention.
The power of connection and community is embodied by works such as Deaf Community Tapestry (1991), the AIDS Memorial Quilt Block 70 (early 1990s) and the Nell Anne Quilt (2020-2024). The passing down of First Nations knowledge through three different generations of women in one family is embodied by Ngugi artists Sonja Carmichael’s and Elisa Jane (Leecee) Carmichael’s Wagari djagun (Carry country), the cyanotype on cotton marked out with the words “mother”, “aunt”, “sister” and “hands”, and created through exposure of iron salts on the cotton to sunlight. The blue hues of Wagari djagun mirror the sky, and a reflection of the interdependence of landscape and the humans who live within it.
Various makers, AIDS Memorial Quilt Block 70, early 1990s, mixed-media textile, 360.0 x 364.0cm; SAMESH and Thorne Harbour Health. Photo: Grant Hancock
Further along are grand tapestries ranging from Alexander Calder’s trio of 1970s modernist woollen works woven by Les Ateliers Pinton in Calder’s signature prime colours, displayed alongside another trio designed by Sonia Delaunay and woven by the same ateliers, while a large work by British textile artist and Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry – entitled Morris, Gainsborough, Turner, Riley (2021) – weaves and blends works by each of the titular artists into a beautifully textured and richly-coloured tapestry representing the history of English art.
Nearby is the exquisite Adoration of the Magi designed by pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones and woven by Morris & Co, one of many pieces from AGSA’s collection of William Morris works, the largest outside the UK.
Sonia Delaunay, Black serpent (Serpent noir), 1971, wool, 148.0 x 311.0cm (work); James and Diana Ramsay Fund 2021, AGSA. © Pracusa. Photo: Grant Hancock
There are groupings of statuesque figures such as the frightening and ominous All the King’s Men by Fiona Hall (2014-2015) that act as a warning against the destructiveness of war; strange and discomfiting soft, sound-emitting figures like Tarryn Gill’s Guardians (2014-2016), which were acquired by AGSA following their display at the 2016 Adelaide Biennale; and friendly figures embodied in Every face has a story, every story has a face: Kulila! (2016) that rejoice in diversity in community.
Two huge wall hangings, Sally Smart’s spectacular Performance/Punokawan/Chout (The Choreography of Cutting) and Paul Yore’s Let us not die from habit deserve a seated, long perusal of the many detailed elements and materials contained in each.
The final room is arranged with a range of fashion pieces by designers ranging from Issey Miyake, Moschino and Viktor&Rolf, to Linda Jackson, Trudy Inkamala and Zaachariaha Fielding. Also on proud display is clothing worn by two SA icons: Don Dunstan’s salmon-pink shorts and Miss Gladys Sym Choon’s Chinese silk jacket and skirt.
Supported by a great many donors, collectors and institutional lenders, the works in Radical Textiles have been gathered from AGSA’s First Nations, Australian and international collections, as well as from private collectors, galleries interstate, community groups and even the chambers of the South Australian Parliament.
Accompanied by one of the most comprehensive and desirable exhibition catalogues seen in some time – it’s packed with a multitude of thought-provoking essays and a fascinating glossary of textile-inspired words – Radical Textiles represents a scholarly and engaging curation with broad appeal which represents such a diverse range of textile arts that it warrants multiple visits. The exhibition is likely to be a source of inspiration for textile artists and academics well into the future.
Radical Textiles is showing at the Art Gallery of South Australia until March 30.
Issey Miyake, Minaret, woman’s ankle-length dress, spring-summer 1995, Tokyo, polyester, 208.0 x 93.0cm; NGA, purchased 1995 with funds donated by Eva and Marc Besen through the Besen Foundation.