The status of textiles as an art medium is highly ambivalent. Traditionally, they have been situated on the margins, in a borderland between art and craft.

Since the 1960s, a growing body of contemporary art demonstrates a new engagement with the materials and techniques of crafts, particularly textiles, raising questions about the value of the handmade in the digital age. This show will include artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry, Ghada Amer and Kimsooja who use textiles as a powerful tool for expressing ideas about the social, political and artistic.

http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/

 

Collection Artist(s)

Glossary

  • Contemporary

    Existing or coming into being at the same period; of today or of the present. The term that designates art being made today.

  • Craft

    The creation of handmade objects intended to be both useful and decorative.

  • Medium

    Refers to either the material used to create a work of art, craft or design, i.e. oil, bronze, earthenware, silk; or the technique employed i.e. collage, etching, carving. In painting the medium refers to the binder for the pigment, e.g. oil, egg, acrylic dispersion. The plural form is media.