Tag: textiles
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The Coast Salish Woolly Dog
The Pacific Northwest of Canada and the United States has a long tradition of weaving practised by the Coast Salish people. Many readers might be familiar with the blankets and cloaks that incorporate colour and pattern distinctive to the region. What you may not know is that some of those pieces might have been made…
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Of shearing and songs
In April 1956, the magazine Te Ao Hou,offered an article to its readership about Tuini Ngāwai, the Māori musician, teacher, shearer and cultural ambassador. Tuini Moetū Haangū Ngāwai was born in 1910 and survived her twin, Te Huinga, to become one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most well-known and respected songwriters. She was also an accomplished…
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Weaving in Greymouth Māwhera
Once upon a time, tweed was briefly woven on the West Coast of Te Waipounamu/ the South Island. The cloth was useful in the cool, damp climate of the Coast but it had to be imported from elsewhere. The tweed that was woven in Hokitika – you can see an example here – was similar…
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How technology can help Cantonese opera
In the city of Hong Kong the centuries-old art of Cantonese opera is making use of technology to help students to learn the artform and sustain it. Professor Leung Bo Wah, Head of Cultural and Creative Art at the Education University of Hong Kong, has created a virtual reality programme, using the same 3D imaging…
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African fashion in Australia
At the end of this month, the National Gallery of Victoria is hosting an exhibition of African fashion, curated by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The exhibition will be supported, it is hoped, by photographs from Australian communities with links to the diaspora, particularly those from the independence and liberation period (mid-1950s to…
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Melissa Cody
The traditional, ancient craft of Navajo weaving has been the passion and lifework of Melissa Cody. Now showing in New York at MoMA PS1, “Webbed Skies” is the work of the past decade; an exploration of a weaving history from Germantown, Pennsylvania that used reclaimed threads from woollen blankets given to displaced Navajo people by…
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Venice and the Biennale
Since 1895 La Biennale di Venezia has been promoting art in its many forms. This year the theme, Stranieri ovunque/ Foreigners everywhere, has led to prestigious awards for Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. The Golden Lion for the Best Participant in the International Exhibition has been won by Mataaho Collective. This quartet of Māori wāhine…
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Showing and Telling
Over the past year I have been running a series of events connected with the textile collection. The collection includes costume (the photograph left is a detail from an Adire robe from Nigeria, and the image below is a detail from Heather Barnett’s “Formanifera” curtains. These events have been held (mostly) in the local Regent…
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Feedback on the blog
Many thanks to everyone who responded to last week’s request for feedback. It is appreciated. Some things readers said… Phew! That is a good amount of great feedback, isn’t it? There are some things that people have suggested might make the blog better to read. These are technical things such as the placement of the…
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Faith Ringgold
Faith Ringgold spent more than fifty years exploring and explaining. This classically-trained sculptor and painter used her energies to fight inequality through art, in particular “story quilts”, unstretched canvases painted with acrylics and bordered with pieced fabric. These pieces told the stories of Black lives, particularly of women, and celebrate “the human capacity to transcend…