Material Worlds: Contemporary Artists and Textiles illuminates the diverse roles textiles play in artistic practice.
The exhibition brings together artists who take the intimate and domestic quality of textiles and transform them into theatrical, bold, unsettling and humorous artworks that inspire, challenge and offer new ways of thinking.
Featuring work created predominantly over the last decade by 15 UK-based artists, Material Worlds highlights their deep awareness of textiles’ cultural history and a shared desire to challenge its traditional associations, testing the material’s expansive and subversive potential.
The familiar fabric of everyday life is reimagined into the unexpected – the ordinary made extraordinary – to reflect on ideas of gender, identity, community, race, technology, and myth; demonstrating the medium’s potential to transform in the hands of different artists.
Artists featured in the exhibition include Caroline Achaintre, Jonathan Baldock, Phyllida Barlow, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Alexandre da Cunha, Holly Hendry, Tonico Lemos Auad, Paul Maheke, Anna Perach, Yelena Popova, Paloma Proudfoot, Yinka Shonibare, Rae-Yen Song, Tenant of Culture and Zadie Xa.
Material Worlds: Contemporary Artists and Textiles is curated by Caroline Achaintre with Hayward Gallery Touring, in partnership with Mead Gallery, Djanogly Gallery, The Wilson Gallery and Pitzhanger Gallery.