Material Worlds: Contemporary Artists and Textiles

The Mead Gallery is the first venue for this ambitious group exhibition from Hayward Gallery Touring. It explores how contemporary artists are using textiles in surprising and radical ways.

Curated by artist Caroline Achaintre, the artists in Material Worlds take the everyday, intimate and accessible qualities of textiles to create artworks that are theatrical, bold, unsettling and humorous.

Spanning a wide range of approaches, the artists in the exhibition share a deep awareness of the cultural significance of textiles, alongside a desire to test their potential as a medium for contemporary art. 

The familiar, material stuff of everyday life is transformed into the unexpected - the ordinary is made extraordinary - to explore ideas of the body, identity, gender, race, heritage, myth and folklore.

Artists:

Caroline Achaintre, Jonathan Baldock, Phyllida Barlow, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Alexandre da Cunha, Holly Hendry, Tonico Lemos Auad, Paul Maheke, Anna Perach, Yelena Popova, Paloma Proudfoot, Yinka Shonibare, Rae-Yen Song, Tenant of Culture and Zadie Xa.