Radical Textiles, open until 30 March, features the work of more than 150 artists, designers and activists, with exhibits ranging from tapestry and embroidery to quilting and tailoring. It celebrates how the humble thread, needle and loom become instruments of social change when re-imagined by artists through non-normative, feminist, queer and black lenses.
The starting point of the exhibition is the work of British artist and designer Willian Morris who, in the late 1800s, countered industrialisation and mass production by weaving tapestries on a manual loom with hand-dyed thread.
It then traverses contested history across 150 years of resistance, rebellion, remembrance and reconciliation – all through textiles. ‘This exhibition poses the question, “What is radical about textiles?”,’ according to the exhibition curators, Rebecca Evans and Leight Robb. ‘Radical is wearing…
