Textiles weave through our everyday lives yet remain one of the most underexamined mediums in art history and contemporary practice. The universality of fabric has made it a potent messenger across global contexts – whether communicating personal stories or conveying hidden messages. Embedded in a single thread is the material history of the medium, revealing ideas relating to gender, labour, value, ecology, ancestral knowledge, and histories of oppression, extraction and trade.

Opening on 13 February 2024, Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art will shine a light on artists from the 1960s to today who have explored the transformative and subversive potential of textiles, harnessing the medium to ask charged questions about power: who holds it, and how can it be challenged and reclaimed? Spanning intimate hand-crafted pieces to large-scale sculptural installations, this major exhibition will bring together over 100 artworks by 50 international practitioners. Drawn to the tactile processes of stitching, weaving, braiding, beading and knotting, these artists have embraced fibre and thread to tell stories that challenge power structures, transgress boundaries and reimagine the world around them.

More information can be found here.