Thursday, 23 February 2012
The first Tamworth Textile Triennial, Sensorial Loop, is drawing strong interest from Melbourne audiences following its opening earlier this month at the RMIT University Gallery.
The nationally-recognised exhibition had its debut at Tamworth Regional Gallery late last year. It was formerly known as the Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial, which over 40 years built a strong national reputation.
Melbourne’s RMIT University Gallery is its first stop on a 19-month tour which will also take it to Goulburn, Taree, Albury, Broken Hill, Stanthorpe, Manly and Ararat.
About 300 people were at the exhibition’s Melbourne opening on February 9 by Roger Leong, Senior Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Sensorial Loop features 22 creative textile artists from across Australia and covers a range of textiles skills, from resist printed textiles to hand-embroidered cross-stitch and machine-knitted metal sculptural forms.
On Friday 10 February there was a series of professional artist and industry talks at the RMIT University Gallery on the future directions of textiles in Australia.
Sandra McMahon, Director of Tamworth Regional Gallery, was among the presenters. She spoke about the significant role the Tamworth gallery has played in the ongoing development of promoting Australian artists who work in textiles.
`The exhibition was extremely well received and Tamworth Regional Council was praised for its continued support of the Gallery in developing such a major exhibition of national significance,’ Ms McMahon said.
The first Tamworth Textile Triennial, Sensorial Loop, will be in Melbourne until March 24.
RMIT Gallery Director Suzanne Davies welcomed the return of the Tamworth textile exhibition, which she said is recognised nationally as Australia's pre-eminent textile-related exhibition.
The Sensorial Loop tour has been made possible through the support and contributions of Arts NSW, the Gordon Darling Foundation, and Visions of Australia.