International Stitchery

An exhib­i­tion of con­tem­por­ary tex­tiles at the Whit­worth Art Gal­lery in Manchester. (I can’t like Manchester — it just seems a mess — I prob­ably need to spend more time there). But the Whit­worth is cool, in an old-fashioned lately mod­ern­ised sort of way and has an adequate café. The tex­tiles, pro­duced by artists from Fin­land, Esto­nia, Latvia, Lithuania, Japan and the UK were stun­ning. I’m always impressed by the innov­a­tion, ima­gin­a­tion and access­ib­il­ity of con­tem­por­ary tex­tile art. (in com­par­ison, maybe, to the sort of Art that enters for the Turner Prize). Beau­ti­ful 3 dimen­sional highly tex­tured pieces, not all hung ver­tic­ally, using a huge vari­ety of mater­i­als but all involving some kind of weaving/embroidery/knitting/felting/stitching. This wasn’t the Weavers’ Guild or the Embroider­ers’ Guild but those organ­isa­tions are also at the fore­front in chal­len­ging assump­tions and habits. Some insti­tu­tions we think of as stuffy are far from it. Don’t for­get it was the WI who booed Tony Blair when he served them up lies and plat­it­udes at their con­fer­ence when he was PM.