University News Last updated 17 June
A new exhibition at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery is set to champion the art of weaving – and highlight its continuing importance in the 21st century.
Organised in partnership with Birmingham City University (BCU), Thread the Loom will shine a light on the weaving process through a series of micro-residences at the city centre venue, starting on 25 July.
Zoë Hillyard, BCU’s academic partner lead and a senior lecturer in Textile Design, says the exhibition is an opportunity to demonstrate that weaving is alive and well.
“There is often the perception that there are limited careers in textiles these days,” said Zoe.
“It’s not the case. It continues to offer rewarding employment for people in the West Midlands and across the country, in all sorts of roles and businesses where it is essential to understand how materials handle and respond.”
Zoe says there is a lot of misconceptions about textile design as a subject.
“Textiles are often overlooked and misunderstood,” she said. “People wear them, sleep under them, sit on them, yet rarely think about the materials they are intimately connected with.
“People know what fashion is - and textiles are a fundamental part of that story.
“Textile designers create the material that fashion designers turn into clothes. However, there are also exciting interior applications for textiles, like carpets, wallpaper, soft furnishings.
“Textiles have also proven to be a powerful language of communication, particularly within community and healthcare settings.
“Our work often underpins other design disciplines, providing structure, pattern, and surface. This exhibition is an opportunity to shout about the importance of textile design.”
As part of the exhibition, an AVL Studio Dobby loom on loan from BCU will be set up at IKON for use by international artist Seulgi Lee and five weavers from across the West Midlands.
Combining the tradition of hand weaving and computer-aided design, they will experiment with materials and structure, creating woven work that will be exhibited as it is made.
Textiles produced on the loom will be exhibited alongside work by contemporary artists Raisa Kabir, Alis Oldfield, Bharti Parmar, Dinah Prentice and Su Richardson.
The featured West Midlands weavers are:
- Chantelle Folarin, BA Textile Design Alumni & AIR
- Clare Langford, BA Textile Design Senior Lecturer
- Theo Wright, Coventry-based weaver
- Andrée Walker, BA Textile Design Visiting Tutor
- Mahawa Keita, BA Textile Design Alumni & AIR
Education and community groups will be able to observe the weavers in action, as well as engage with and participate in the construction of simple-to-complex compositions.
There will also be outreach activities as part of Ikon's BCU Tuesdays.
This exhibition, which runs until 7 September and is free to the public, is supported by Jerwood Foundation, Cotton Textiles Research Trust, The Saintbury Trust, and Freelands Foundation.
For more information, click here.
For more information about Textile Design at BCU, click here. Instagram link here.