Gathered Threads: Lyrical Practices

Gathered Threads: Lyrical Practices

20 June to 23 August 2026

Gallery 3

Gathered Threads: Lyrical Practices marks the fifth anniversary of this evolving exhibition project, and, for this iteration, nine textile-based artists from across Victoria present newly created works. Together, they form a constellation of practices that honour the depth, resilience, and ingenuity embedded in working with fabric—an artform too often dismissed as domestic, decorative, or secondary, yet foundational to cultural memory and material knowledge.

This exhibition foregrounds the instrumental skillsets that textile work demands patience, dexterity, experimentation, and a deep atonement to material histories. The artists draw from fabrics that are frequently overlooked—discarded remnants, mass-produced cloth, undervalued fibres, and materials shaped by uneven global systems of labour and education. Furthermore, employing implemental techniques such as stitching as a mark making tool – a fundamental technique when embracing the world of textiles, and a technique that anchors the diverse practices across this exhibition.

Gathered Threads allures the processes of repurposing and upcycling these materials, to become agents of critique and transformation. They challenge assumptions about environmental care, consumption, and waste; they speak to geopolitical and sociopolitical conditions; and they offer pathways for community connection through shared making. Across an array of soft sculpture, installation, two-dimensional works, and mobile forms, the exhibition embraces an interdisciplinary approach that expands the field of textile practice. Each work becomes a site of inquiry, asking how fabric might move beyond its utilitarian role in daily life to become a carrier of narrative, memory, and resistance. The artists’ investigations reveal textiles as lyrical—capable of holding rhythm, gesture, and voice—and as resourceful, shaped by long-standing traditions of mending, salvaging, and reimagining.

At its core, Gathered Threads: Lyrical Practices pays tribute to the ongoing vitality of textile art in Australia. It acknowledges the lineage of makers who have sustained these practices and the contemporary artists who continue to push them into new conceptual and material territories. This spirit of continuity reflects the original vision of Dijanne Cevaal, who initiated Gathered Threads with a commitment to celebrating the breadth of Australian textile art and its deep ties to place. As she noted, “…the project began by bringing together artists connected to Gippsland—whether through family, home, or a place to pause and create…” That ethos of connection remains central, with this year’s group representing both local talent and some of the country’s leading textile practitioners.

Five years on, the exhibition continues to evolve while holding fast to its founding principles: to champion textile art in its many forms and techniques, to honour the communities that sustain it, and to invite audiences to reconsider the fabric of their own surroundings. Through the gathered threads of these nine artists, the exhibition offers a collective meditation on materiality, care, and the quiet power of making.

Artists

Image: Beth and Trevor Reid, Let’s Dance, 2026. Materials: All cotton printed fabric with some solid, wool polyester wadding and cotton thread.