14 February to 4 July 2004
Myer Fashion and Textiles Gallery
Pins and Needles brings together contemporary, historical, functional, wearable and purely decorative works from the National Gallery of Victoria's Australian Fashion and Textiles collection. Exploring a diverse range of textile techniques, the exhibition includes everything from quilting, embroidery and screenprinting, to weaving, crochet, knitting and beyond. The range of works gathered in this exhibition celebrate the richness of our local textile design heritage. Many of the distinctive and innovative approaches taken by Australian textile artists past and present are highlighted.
The selected works capture the many levels of textile creation and transformation. Some artists have started with fibres and used a combination of processes to construct a piece, incorporating knots, stitches, loops and weaves. Others have begun on a fabric ground which they embellish, dissolve, dye or print using a variety of methods.
This latter approach to technique is also manifest in the resurfacing, piecing and reconstruction of existing fabrics. Some techniques are adopted in a singular sense, but artists also blend, adapt and appropriate making methods as part of a more multi-layered design practice.
The physical form of these works and the source of their inspiration alternates between acknowledgment of their Australian origin and responding to a personal or global starting point. The relative function of these works also reflects the diversity that has existed within over two centuries of personal and professional textile practice. The exhibition contrasts the multiple roles of textile arts in our daily lives. Some have been created as an end in themselves, others for translation into furnishings or domestic items, and, significantly, many form the basis of our wearable material culture.
Pins & Needles is the fourth exhibition to be shown in the NGV’s new dedicated space for the Australian Fashion and Textiles collection at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, and the first to explicitly focus on textile and technique.
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