Textiles Exhibition at Rmit Gallery

Patrick Snelling, RMIT Textile Design Program Director and curator of Sensorial Loop So I tried to represent, as a curator, as many areas of textile practice as possible 'cause we have, I suppose, four key categories, which is woven, knitted, printed and non-woven. I also, sort of, invented a new category, which is ... because in textile terms we have technical terms called interweaving, or inter-meshing of fibres, and I looked at the word inter-mashing, because that sort of brings the old and the new together, and I think that's what a lot of new practitioners are bringing to their work. There are obviously lots of digital influences in our lives, we're a very connected society, but there's also a return to the handmade the slow movement for instance. Hannah Pang, Textile Artist, Hong Kong and China, Double Happiness Portrait of a Chinese Wedding This collection actually is more about fabric than the styling, because we just used a Chinese wedding as a topic to give it, you know, to hold the ... to pull the whole thing together. [Slow Asian music begins] But the actual ... the real idea is to see how many different ways we can, you know, transform the fabric. A base fabric. [Asian music stops] We had four, sort of, key areas I suppose, was the haptic, the idea of touch. And that's the material quality of textiles, it's a material that has to be touched. You don't, you can't engage with it without actually coming into contact with it. We have the nostalgic view of textiles, and there's a lot of references in the works in this show about familial past, you know, memories, how textiles ... we remember textiles from our early years and we have favourite pieces of clothing and so forth. And the skills that maybe mothers passed down to daughters, and even some cases fathers passed down to sons. The idea that making products and textiles at home was quite a big thing in past generations. And some artists have said, well I learnt how to make textiles from my grandmother. And sometimes there's a generational gap now between mothers and daughters about making. Yay. [Clapping and cheers] [Laughter] Because a lot of young people, even design students in China, they really know ... doesn't know very much about, you know, the ... our trad ... you know, like traditional craft. And I think it's a great pity, and because I went to the design institutes in China and then you ... I met all the students and they've no idea what is available there. And because I display some of the fabrics I made in China, and they couldn't believe it's made in China. And I think isn't it terrible? You really don't know about your heritage, and I want to do something about it, and I want to show them what is possible. I mean, not that I'm doing something so fantastic, but I just want show them what can be done if they try.