ADELAIDE.- A world-exclusive exhibition, Radical Textiles opens at the Art Gallery of South Australia this Saturday 23 November 2024. From tapestry and embroidery to quilting and tailoring, in the hands of artists, textiles have been pivotal in expressing moments of profound social change and political rupture. The exhibition presents works by more than 150 artists, designers and activists to explore how textiles have marked acts of resistance, revival, remembrance and reconciliation over the past 150 years.

Just announced, Australian fashion label Romance Was Born will present a pop-up shop at AGSA from 10am-4pm on Saturday 23 November, while the opening weekend will include a series of artist talks and the launch of a dazzling activity space for children and families developed by South Australian Pop Art artist Frida Las Vegas.

Exhibition co-curators, Curator of Decorative Art and Design Rebecca Evans and Curator of Contemporary Art Leigh Robb, comment, ‘This exhibition poses the question, ‘What is radical about textiles?’ Radical is wearing pink shorts to Parliament in 1972 as did former South Australian Premier, Don Dunstan. Radical is picking up a needle and thread to agitate for the right to vote, equal pay and climate justice. Radical is First Nations artists and fashion designers using textiles to unpick colonisation.’

Celebrating the shared knowledge and enduring traditions that are woven into textiles, this major exhibition draws on AGSA’s international, Australian and First Nations collections of textiles and fashion, augmented by soft sculpture, photography and the moving image.

AGSA Acting Director Emma Fey says, ‘Exclusive to AGSA, Radical Textiles brings together more than 150 works from public and private collections alongside new commissions to reveal the experimental ways textiles have been transformed in the hands of contemporary artists. With a bold exhibition design by Grieve Gillett Architects, this exhibition will showcase the power of textiles to communicate potent ideas of our time.’

As its starting point, Radical Textiles takes the work of British artist and designer William Morris, who in the late nineteenth century sought to counter the mechanisation and mass-production of the Industrial Revolution by weaving tapestries on a manual loom with hand-dyed thread. Today, many artists are experimenting with the materials and techniques of textile design as a ‘slow making’ antidote to the high speed digital age.

Radical Textiles also explores the way artists have reclaimed materials and techniques to revive them through feminist, queer and black lenses. From suffragette banners to drag queen fashion extravaganzas, the exhibition uncovers the way textiles have brought together communities and forged connections across time. Radical Textiles will also showcase quilts made as memorials during the AIDS crisis and a collaborative contemporary quilt made by Australian artist Nell - dedicated to the important women in our lives in homage to women’s creativity, care and labour.

The Honourable Andrea Michaels MP, Minister for Arts says, ‘Whether you are a fashion lover or an avid embroiderer, Radical Textiles is an opportunity to experience the profound impact of textiles throughout modern history. This is an exciting and engaging exhibition that demonstrates the impact textiles and fashion have had to start conversations and capture pivotal moments in time. Don Dunstan on the steps of Parliament in those iconic pink shorts perfectly captured the challenging of social norms and optimism of South Australia in the 1970s.’

AGSA has actively collected international, Australian and First Nations works of fashion over the last decade. The exhibition will draw upon AGSA’s holdings, and private and public collections to include fashion garments by international labels including Viktor&Rolf, Iris van Herpen, Issey Miyake and Vivienne Westwood, alongside Australian talent such as Linda Jackson, Romance Was Born, Jordan Gogos, Paul McCann, DISCOUNT UNIVERSE, Nicol & Ford and South Australian label Paolo Sebastian.

Some of the highlights on display in Radical Textiles include:

Grayson Perry, Morris, Gainsborough, Turner, Riley, 2021
Sir Grayson Perry is a prize-winning contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster, famous for his ceramics and tapestries. In the majestic, 3.6 metre-wide jacquard tapestry Morris, Gainsborough, Turner, Riley, Perry layers and weaves together the imagery of four iconic British works of art spanning more than 300 years of art history. The work will be presented alongside The Adoration of the Magi from AGSA’s world renowned Morris & Co. collection, which is the largest outside of Britain.

Nell, NELL ANNE QUILT, 2020-24
Initiated by Nell in collaboration with the McCahon House in Aotearoa New Zealand and hand stitched by participants from across the globe, Nell’s NELL ANNE QUILT will be premiered in Radical Textiles. This collaborative quilt project invited the public to embroider a patch of fabric with the name of a significant woman in their life. In total, 441 embroidered patches were received, each one holding the memory of a woman, from well-known female trailblazers to mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, cousins, friends and neighbours.

Sonia Delaunay, Black serpent (Serpent noir), 1971
Considered one of the most significant textile artists of the twentieth century, French artist Sonia Delaunay was so pivotal to the Parisian avant-garde that the term ‘Orphism’ was coined to describe her circular abstraction and bold use of colour. Black serpent (Serpent noir) is an example of such boldness. It was exhibited in a major survey of Delaunay’s tapestries at the Musee D’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1972, curated by Jacques Lassaigne, and is now part of AGSA’s collection.

Grace Lillian Lee, Future Woven Floral Forms (black) 3, 2020
The visionary artist and designer Grace Lillian Lee interprets the Torres Strait Islander palm-leaf weaving practice, commonly used for basketry, to create objects of contemporary adornment.

After graduating with honours in fashion design from RMIT in Melbourne, Lee was taught weaving by the renowned Meriam Mer artist Uncle Ken Thaiday, from Erub Island (Darnley Island) in the Torres Strait. Future Woven Floral Forms (black) 3 draws inspiration from her grandmother’s white wedding dress from 1948. The work radiates pride and power and weaves together generations of cultural sharing and strength to celebrate her grandmother’s resilience.

South Australian AIDS Memorial Quilt, early 1990s
A global initiative that originated in 1987 in San Francisco, the AIDS Memorial Quilt Project invited people to sew quilt panels in dedication to those who had died from AIDS. The Australian AIDS Memorial Quilt Project was launched by Ita Buttrose on World AIDS Day, 1 December 1988, and South Australia’s contributions began by 1989. Each panel acts as a memorial to a life lost during the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when people living with HIV had limited therapeutic options and a HIV positive diagnosis was considered a terminal illness.

Viktor&Rolf, Get mean, 2019
Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren of Dutch fashion house Viktor&Rolf are two of the most innovative and conceptual designers working in haute couture today. Self described as ‘fashion artists’ the duo has collaborated since 1993 producing highly avant-garde designs marrying concept, innovation, and humour. Get mean is from Viktor & Rolf’s 2019 Spring haute couture collection Fashion statements. This collection included voluminous tulle gowns with witty applied slogans drawn from social media and contemporary culture.

Paul Yore, Let us not die from habit, 2018
Let us not die from habit is a contemporary history tableaux and signature example of Paul Yore’s radical approach to embroidery. Yore describes the work as 'like a web that has been cast across the wasteland of culture, catching all kinds of flotsam and jetsam upon its surface', offering a contrast between the 'slow thoughtfulness' of textiles against the 'distracted immediacy' of the digital age. His work revives the status of textiles as a powerful medium that has historically given form to countercultures and protest through banners, flags and patches.