Cloth, Language and Contemporary Art Discourse

The exclusion of textile from modern readings of art-history has served as a metaphor for the exclusion of certain social groups and political agendas. As such, textile, with its histories and connotations of craft, manual labour and class and gender divisions, had become a mirror image of certain communities in the socio-political fabric.

One of the key texts we had at Goldsmiths during my time on the textiles programmes, 1990-2002 was Rozika Parker who in her 1984 book, Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the making of the Feminine, made the connection between embroidery and the construction of the feminine, how social groups and the practices assigned to them can be positioned within the hegemonic political map. It is therefore timely that ‘Cut Cloth: Contemporary Textile and Feminisms’ will be launched at the Whitworth Art Gallery, in Manchester where the exhibition, ‘The Subversive Stitch’ was originally shown in 1988[i]. ‘ There is also a web site dedicated to the 'The Subversive Stitch ReVisited' hosted by the Women's Art Library at Goldsmiths. Goldsmiths. http://www.gold.ac.uk/subversivestitchrevisited/.