12 September - 6 October 2000

arttextiles 2 was the second major survey of contemporary, investigative work in this rapidly developing area of visual art. Here, textiles does not imply a medium but a site for discursive practice, where cultural, social, personal, historical and aesthetic concerns intersect.

Twenty-three selected artists pushed the language of textiles beyond use or tasteful decoration to pose questions on a range of issues: the virtual and the real; Englishness; the environment; aesthetic categories; subjectivities. The selection was cross-generational, with recent graduates shown alongside established practitioners such as Jerwood Prize-winner, Caroline Broadhead.

The work was part of a growing tendency in visual art to conceptualise through process and materiality. These artists occupy the same territory as Yinka Shonibare and Turner Prize shortlisted Michael Raedecker. The work refuted the prejudice that artisan and intellectual are incompatible as artists juxtaposed the made and readymade. Critic Pamela Johnson wrote in her catalogue essay: ‘making continues to be important, but in the expanded forms of un-making, re-making, making connections’.

Selection, from an original submission of over 400, was made by an internationally respected panel: artists Yinka Shonibare and Polly Binns; Professor Sarat Maharaj of Goldsmiths’ College; Gill Hedley, Director, Contemporary Art Society. They were impressed by the level of risk-taking and original thinking which ranged across contemporary preoccupations. Yinka Shonibare: ‘there are issues of class, of kitsch and taste…’ Professor Sarat Maharaj: ‘…we don’t see the intellectual here as something floating about above the business of making… they intersect in an electric way’.

Art Textiles 2 toured to 5 venues over two years
Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery, 12 September-26 October 2000 (t. 01284 762081)
Harley Gallery, Welbeck, 9 November-23 December 2000 (t. 01909 501700)
Shire Hall, Stafford, 24 February-14 April 2001 (t. 01785 278345)
Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, 28 April-17 June 2001 (t. 01423 503340)
MAC, Birmingham, 24 November 2001-6 January 2002 (t. 0121 440 4221)
Collins Gallery, Glasgow, 19 January-2 March 2002 (t. 0141 548 4145)

A full colour 48 page catalogue which, as well as the essay by Pamela Johnson, includes a discussion amongst the selectors is available from the Gallery.