Pliable Planes: Expanded Textiles and Fibre Practices
Abstract for work-in-progress
Pliable Planes: Expanded Textiles and Fibre Practices is one of the first exhibitions to find a framework for a vast scope of new contemporary work emerging out of textile histories. Like the theoretical underpinnings of the exhibition, its title draws on two semi-eponymous essays, one by Anni Albers, The Pliable Plane: Textiles in Architecture (1957), a German-American weaver, artist and designer; and another by Rosalind Krauss, Sculpture in the Expanded Field (1979), an American art historian and critic. Although all artists in the exhibition are Australian, only a handful of works engage with issues specific to the cultural history of the continent. The majority operate within a global context where first-world design history provides a critical springboard to their autonomous textile art.
Kate Scardifield, Canis Major, 2019. 34°53’29.4″S 150°29’60.0″E. Wind instruments and form tests. Studies in semaphore and signaling. Sailcloth, rip-stop nylon, repurposed parachute silk, thread.