World of Threads Festival
Material Connections
2012 Exhibition: Gallery
Material Connections brings together three contemporary fibre artists; Meghan Price, Anna Torma and Xiaojing Yan, whose varied use of materials and cultural backgrounds gives a sampling of the dynamic world of fibre arts.
Writing by Stanzie Tooth
Photography by Gareth Bate
Curators
- Canada: Ontario: Toronto: Stanzie Tooth, Amanda McCavour.
Artists
- Canada: Ontario: Toronto: Meghan Price, Xiaojing Yan. New Brunswick: Baie Verte: Anna Torma.
Gallery
- Lonsdale Gallery.
City
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Dates
- Nov. 9 - Dec. 2, 2012.
What were the overall themes of your exhibition for the 2012 festival?
Amanda and I had discussed the idea of putting together an exhibition about contemporary fibre art for a couple of years now. The World of Threads Festival 2012 was the perfect opportunity for us to finally execute this idea.
The exhibition, titled Material Connections did not have an over arching theme. Instead, we wanted to take this opportunity to highlight artists we are really excited by. We wanted to show the inventiveness and diversity of how fibre arts are being used in the contemporary fine art world.
How did you come up with the title for the exhibition?
Material Connections is a play on words since the connective 'thread' of the show is that all of the artists are using fibre in their work. As we continued to develop the show, it also sparked our interest that all of these artists had very different backgrounds and experience. Part of what is fascinating about fibre is that all cultures both current and past have a connection to fibre/fabric. It is part of ceremonies/traditions as well as an every day material that is familiar to all. Fibre is also multi sensory – it is a visual and tactile medium. I think for these and a myriad of other reasons, contemporary artists seem to be identifying with the material more and more.
In short – we wanted to show how the artists, though very unique, were each using the language of fibre in their work.
