Words by Isabelle Blakeney
Curated by internationally-renowned textile art pioneer, Professor Alice Kettle, with curator of international textiles Professor Lesley Millar MBE, Soft Power: lives told through textile art is a captivating journey into the intricacies of fabric’s ability to carry histories, tell stories, and protest injustice. As a powerful portrayal of culture, individuality and lived experience it is deeply personal and intensely emotive. As an exhibition of mesmerising, immersive beauty, it hits every mark.
Spread across two rooms on the top floor of the RWA, the exhibition is separated loosely into two halves: the first, a look at cloth’s ability to connect individuals, communities and generations across social divides; the second, a more concentrated look at how textiles can portray and carry lived experiences and identity across past, present and future.
On entering the exhibition, you’re met with vast, beautifully bold pieces suspended from the ceilings and covering walls. An Irish mantle (a cloak banned by British colonial law in 1426) embroidered with the words ‘we all untie knots’ hangs from the ceiling, its vein-like threads representing roots and stories that are deep and impenetrable, while also hanging loose as a reminder of a future not yet lived. A series of dresses made in collaboration with five South African women fill the middle of the room (Cuttings 1820-2020, Pippa Hetherington in collaboration with Keiskamma Art Project & Nozeti Makhubalo, Nomonde Mtandana, Nomfundo Makhubalo and Nothandile Bopani), with a white cloth stitched with possible futures by Rieko Koga looming large behind (Future Diary).
The energy of the room feels kinetic, the movement of the pieces acting as a reminder of cloth’s ability to tell ever changing stories, as well as its place as a fluid carrier of culture and identities. On either side of the room, huge pieces cover the walls: a series of embroidered medical gauze (Hver Dag [Every Day] by Lise Linert) and a vast collection of panels of embroidered faces and colours on white cloth (Together by Alice Kettle and Friends).
The second room feels more intimate, focusing on smaller scale pieces and garments. A series of layered, embroidered and illuminated white cloths (whitework, an unravelling by Mona Craven) is a mesmerising exploration of a family’s migration across continents, and a dress made from dressmakers’ pins (Widow by Susie MacMurray) is at once beautiful and threatening. Astro Anurita’s Spacesuit by Anurita Chandola sews mnemonic objects on to the artist’s mother’s blanket, a playful but personal illustration of heritage, family and life. The breadth of stories and histories told in this relatively small exhibit is an impressive feat; the artwork tells both stories of individual identity and experience, and also of culture and societies, in an exploration of the inherent deeply personal nature of cloth and fabrics. Soft Power is a visually stunning reminder that cloth, as a unique intersection of art, culture and lived experience, stands firm in society as a place of extreme power and timeless beauty.
Soft Power: lives told through textile art is showing until 10 August and is part of RWA’s ‘Summer of Textiles’. The programme includes Luke Jerram’s new experimental installation made from Magenta ribbon which will cover the RWA’s exterior, alongside a series of other exhibitions and one-off events.
rwa.org.uk
