Exhibitions: Peruvian and Guatemalan Textiles in London and the USA

Today’s blog focusses on two exhibitions featuring textiles from South and Central America.

Exhibition dates: 21 June – 8 September 2019

A proto-Nazca culture tapestry. Photo courtesy of Paul Hughes Fine Art.

The first of these is Weavers of the Clouds: Textile Arts of Peru which recently opened at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London. This exhibition has traditional textiles on one floor and those by contemporary designers on another. Running alongside the main exhibition is a display entitled A Thread: Contemporary Art of Peru, which showcases the work of seventeen Peruvian artists.

Hugh Thomson, the author of Cochineal Red, has written a very interesting article about this exhibition for The Design Edit. In it he stresses the importance textiles have always had in Peruvian culture and how when the “conquistadors arrived in 1532, they could not understand why so many Inca warehouses were stocked with textiles rather than gold or silver, which the indigenous people considered less valuable.”  Among the many highlights of the exhibition are thirteen pieces from the British Museum, a hat which dates to 600 AD and a tunic made of macaw feathers.

Some of the pieces from Peruvian artists such as Meche Correa and Chiara Macchievello are simply stunning, with intricate embroidery and weaving techniques. A dress that was inspired by Peruvian designs, but was actually part of a Vivienne Westwood collection, also features.

Floral skirt designed by Meche Correa. Photo © Momtaz Begum-Hossain.

For full details of opening hours and how to book visit the website of the Fashion and Textile Museum.

Location: Fashion and Textile Museum. 83 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3XF

 

Exhibition dates: 21 July – 13 October 2019

 

The second exhibition is on at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles and looks at Mayan Traje: A Tradition in Transition. This exhibition explores how the clothing of the Maya of Guatemala was once specific to each village, and how and why that is changing over time.

Photo © Rachael Myrow/KQED

Rachael Myrow has written an article for KQED Arts giving more background to how this exhibition came about and the links to Mayan people who now call San Francisco their home. Many of the textiles on display come from private collections and date to the early twentieth century.

For full details visit the website of the museum.

Location: Turner and Gilliland Galleries, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, 520 S. First Street, San Jose, California.

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Exhibition: Inca Dress Code – Textiles and Adornments of the Andes

Exhibition dates: 23 November 2018 – 24 March 2019

The Americas collections of the Royal Museum of Art and History, Brussels are among the finest and most extensive in Europe.  Although the various Andean cultures (Peru, Bolivia and Chile) are well-known mainly for their ceramics, their precious metalwork, and their mummies, the public does not have a clear picture of how these people lived and dressed.  Textiles were particularly valued because they were considered an extremely precious commodity: they were not only items for wearing, but also symbols of power and identity and could be used as offerings or as a currency of exchange.

This exhibition offers the opportunity to admire the magnificence of the textiles, the quality of the precious metalwork and the beauty of pre-Colombian feather work.  Visitors will also discover the mastery of the art of weaving, the sophistication of the motifs, and the varied and still vibrant colours of the fibres and feathers.  Through the discovery of their wardrobe (shoes, clothes, head dresses and jewellery) visitors will share in the daily life of these people from the past and admire exceptionally high quality, vividly coloured items as well as impressive precious metalwork.

For more information visit the website of the Royal Museum of Art & History

Location: Art & History Museum, Parc of the Cinquantenaire 10, 1000 Brussels

 

 

Exhibition: Kuba – Fabric of an Empire

Exhibition dates: 19 August 2018 – 24 February 2019

This exhibition of dazzling Kuba textiles presented in the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Cone Collection galleries reveals how a central African kingdom independently developed a form of modernist abstraction in the 20th century.

The Kuba kingdom, on the southern edge of the Congolese Rainforest in central Africa, developed one of the greatest civilisations in the history of the continent. Art and design were central to their life. In addition to an elaborate and varied masquerade tradition, Kuba men and women were prolific textile artists, even weaving houses and embroidering currency. As the kingdom grew richer and more powerful, Kuba men and women began to create increasingly abstract designs. Works produced in Kuba’s earlier periods are defined by repeating patterns and minute details. Textiles created at the height of the kingdom’s power and prestige are characterised by bold, inventive designs that are constantly in flux.

An excellent in depth review of this exhibition, entitled A Great African Kingdom Tells Its History In Fabulous Royal Clothes, by Tim McDonnell with many additional images can be found here

For further information on visiting the exhibition see the website of the Baltimore Museum of Art

Event: Empowering Fabrics – Aboriginal Screen-printed textiles from Australia’s Top End

 

 

Event date: Saturday 20 October 2018, 10am

This lecture by Joanna Barrkman will explore the phenomenon of how artists in remote Aboriginal Australian communities have embraced screen-printing on textiles as a contemporary art practice as they work in locally owned and operated art centres on their traditional lands. Each art centre has developed its own style of printed fabrics as well as distinctive approaches to printed fabric production and distribution. This lecture will convey how, over the past three decades, Indigenous Australian artists have taken command of textile printing designs and technology to a point of mastery. This mastery of technique empowers artists and printers to confidently retell, transmit, revitalise and share ancient iconography, knowledge and connection to land, in contemporary and inventive ways.

The screen-printed textiles featured in this presentation originate from five art centres and demonstrate the resilience of Aboriginal Australian culture and the perseverance of Indigenous artists as they create extraordinary textile art in often harsh and remote environments using the simplest of facilities. Examples of printed textiles from public and private collections will be featured.

Location: Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum, San Francisco

For further details visit the website of the Textile Arts Council

Exhibition: Fabric Africa – Stories Told Through Textiles

 

 

Exhibition dates: 30 June 2018 – 19 May 2019, Bristol, UK

Fabric Africa is a stunning snapshot of the diversity of modern and historic textiles from across the continent of Africa.

Highlights from the World Cultures and British and Empire and Commonwealth collections of Bristol Museum & Art Gallery will reflect the variety of patterns, colours, materials and techniques created as well as focusing on the personal and provocative stories they can tell.

The selection of textiles and clothing dates from the late 1800’s to the present day and come from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Sudan, Mali and Swaziland amongst others.

From mud cloth to adinkra, barkcloth dresses to kanga cotton prints, ‘royal’ kente cloth to huge embroidered agbadas, this exhibition will give a taste of the amazing ingenuity of the textile artists of Africa and explore the importance of cloth in social and political lives of those who wear them.

There are also some individual stand-out pieces like the 1980’s European style dress and suit made from barkcloth – the clothes were a gift to some European friends from a Ugandan chief – and a Victorian style heavy cotton dress worn today by Herero women from Namibia.

For more information visit the website of the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

 

News: Textile Museum Journal Relaunched

After a hiatus of more than ten years, The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum are pleased to announce the relaunch of the Textile Museum Journal.

Established in 1962, the Textile Museum Journal is the leading publication for the exchange of textile scholarship in North America. The peer-reviewed journal promotes high-quality research on the cultural, technical, historical and aesthetic significance of textiles from Asian, African and indigenous American cultures. Last issued in 2004, the journal resumed annual publication last month, thanks to a Founding Patron gift from the Markarian Foundation, and is now available in an online format.

Table of Contents
Textile Museum Journal, Volume 44

Toward a Grammar of Textiles: A Reconsideration of Medieval Textile Aesthetics and the Impact of Modern Collecting
Arielle Winnik

Nomad Textile Bags from Central Asia in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Geographic Distribution, Decoration, Semantics
Irina Bogoslovskaya

Through the Renaissance Frame: Carpets and the Beginnings of ‘Islamic Art’ in Nineteenth-Century Vienna and Berlin
Denise-Marie Teece

Pope Innocent VIII’s Mamluk Carpets from Cairo in Context: Their Manufacture and Acquisition
Rosamond E. Mack

Rethinking Mamluk Carpet Origins
Gerald Pollio

For more information, visit the website of the Textile Museum, Washington DC.

News: Why Did Vikings Have ‘Allah’ Woven into Funeral Clothes?

Researchers in Sweden have found Arabic characters woven into burial garments from Viking boat graves. The discovery raises new questions about the influence of Islam in Scandinavia.

The clothing was kept in storage for more than 100 years, dismissed as typical examples of Viking Age funeral clothes. But a new investigation into the garments – found in ninth and tenth-century graves – has thrown up groundbreaking insights into contact between the Viking and Muslim worlds. Patterns woven with silk and silver thread have been found to spell the words ‘Allah’ and ‘Ali’.

The breakthrough was made by textile archaeologist Annika Larsson of Uppsala University while re-examining the remnants of burial dress from male and female boat and chamber graves originally excavated in Birka and Gamla Uppsala in Sweden in the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.

To read about this discovery in full, visit the BBC website.

 

Event: World Textile Day North – Frodsham, Cheshire

Event date: Saturday 23 September 2017, 10am – 4:30pm

Every year at World Textile Days around the country, the organisers explore a common theme through their free exhibition, and morning and afternoon presentations (only £3 per session). In 2017, their world textile experts will focus on the role of colour in textiles.

FREE admission to our exhibition of woven, printed and embroidered textiles from around the world.

FAIR TRADE MARKET from makers, workshops and villages around the world.

Plus:

• 11 am presentation. Magie Relph – quilter, collector, textile trader and author of African Wax Print: A Textile Journey.
• 2 pm Show & Tell. Bring and discuss your own world textile with one of our world textile experts. Plus: a short talk.
  £3 per session or £5 for both, tickets at the door.
• Throughout the day: demonstrations by the Braid Society.

With these specialist world textile traders:

• Textile Traders – Jim and Diane Gaffney
• The African Fabric Shop – Magie Relph and Bob Irwin
• Tukuru South American Textiles – Meri Hunneyball
• Khayamiya Egyptian Appliqué – Joan and John Fisher
• Indian Textiles – Tanya Byrne
• Nepalese Textiles – Karen Haggis
• Indian Silk – Suzy Rowe

Delicious refreshments provided by our hosts Frodsham Patchwork Group. Disabled access. Free parking. Station: Frodsham.

Venue: Frodsham Community Centre, Fluin Lane (B5439), Frodsham, Cheshire, WA6 7QN.

For more information, visit the World Textile Day website.

Event: World Textile Day East – Mundford, Norfolk

Event date: Saturday 9 September 2017, 10am – 4:30pm

Every year at World Textile Days around the country, the organisers explore a common theme through their free exhibition, and morning and afternoon presentations (only £3 per session). In 2017, their world textile experts will focus on the role of colour in textiles.

FREE admission to our exhibition of woven, printed and embroidered textiles from around the world.

FAIR TRADE MARKET from makers, workshops and villages around the world.

Plus:

• 11 am presentation. Jim Gaffney, textile trader, collector and traveller – The old colours are best: A resurgence in natural dyes.
• 2 pm Show & Tell. Bring and discuss your own world textile with one of our world textile experts. Plus: a short talk.
• £3 per session or £5 for both, tickets at the door.

With these specialist world textile traders:

• Textile Traders – Jim and Diane Gaffney
• The African Fabric Shop – Magie Relph and Bob Irwin
• John Gillow
• Slow Loris Chinese Tribal Textiles – Martin Conlan
• Susan Briscoe Designs – Japanese Kimono and fabrics
• Tukuru South American Textiles – Meri Hunneyball
• Callishibori – Jane Callender

Delicious refreshments. Disabled access. Free parking. Stations: Brandon and Downham Market.

Venue: Mundford Village Hall, St Leonards Street, Mundford, near Thetford, Norfolk, IP26 5DW.

N.B. There are still two more World Textile Days to be held in Cheshire and Bristol later in September, so if you’d like to attend this event, but it’s a little too far away, you might still be able to attend a different one instead.

For more information, visit the World Textile Day website.

Event: Tribal Art London 2017

Event dates: 6 – 9 September 2017

Tribal Art London will mark its tenth year when it opens to the public on 6 September 2017 at the Mall Galleries, London.  Indigenous and tribal art and artefacts, no longer the preserve of museum curators and ethnographers, have emerged as an important element of today’s art market.  In 2007, London gallerist Bryan Reeves brought together several like-minded dealers from the international tribal art scene to create the UK’s first-ever specialist event in this field.  It has grown significantly to become a vibrant fair with 23 participants from the UK, Europe, Africa and the USA.

Tribal Art London is a focal point for art collectors, and has made its mark on the international fair circuit by offering an exciting diversity of works for sale, as well as hosting lectures and talks on many subjects relating to indigenous cultures. Tribal Art London 2017 will have a special focus on the art of tattooing and the organisers are pleased to announce that Martin Poole, a leading traditional tattooist and expert in hand-worked body art, will be present at the fair to give demonstrations of this ancient skill.

New exhibitors in 2017 include Frans Faber (Netherlands) with fine tribal arts from Indonesia, Oceania and Africa; Mark Eglington (New York); John-Paul Raad (London) with art of the Niger River region; and Emmanuel Amelot of Belgium.  They join regulars such as OATG member Joss Graham (London) with traditional textiles, costume, sculpture, ceramics, baskets and jewellery; Sam Handbury-Madin (UK) a young dealer with a fascination for tribal works from every culture; Louis Nierijnck (Netherlands) with tribal art, textiles and adornment from Africa, the Himalayas and Southeast Asia; Marcuson & Hall (Brussels), with a particular interest in fibre works and textiles from Asia and Africa; Raccanello Tribal Art (UK) with Polynesian art, and Charles Vernon-Hunt (UK), specialist in tribal art books.

The UK organisers of Tribal Art London are Adam Prout of Adam Ethnographic Art, with tribal art and artefacts from all regions of the globe, and Bryan Reeves of Tribal Gathering, expert in African tribal art and adornment.

Admission is free.

For more information, visit the Tribal Art London website.