My Nature

The Slow Textiles Group presents its next exhibition My Nature – An Exhibition of Flora and Fauna in Contemporary European Textiles Design and Practice, showcasing eight international contemporary textile designers who embrace nature in their woven, printed and embroidered work.

In a global consumer society that sees floral textiles as benign, whimsical expressions of femininity and lightness, this exhibition highlights expressions of nature’s more compelling characteristics through textiles:  haunting, evocative, resilient, persistent, vulnerable, seasonal, forceful and cyclical.

In an increasingly urban age, mist, stars, fog, dew, decay, patina, sandstorms and the force of nature are distanced in much contemporary design. This exhibition serves to redress the balance.  In the first of a series celebrating the diversity of the natural world,My Nature focuses on the contemporary textile designer’s personal response to nature. The work of celebrated international designers, from Sarah Campbell to Ying Wu, is placed side by side for the first time in this snapshot anthology of textiles and nature. What is clear is that no two natures are the same and the question arises; what is the designer’s relationship with nature, what is seen, shown and evoked?

By bringing these different interpretations into the gallery, an opportunity arises to reflect on nature and bring the textile designer’s interpretive processes into focus. This is the underlying structure and narrative of the exhibition and public programme: to show that the designer’s expression is closer to their nature than culture and commerce otherwise propose.

The My NatureSymposium is the focus of the public programme taking place on November 16^th 2013 from 2 – 8pm in the gallery. Other events will take place in situ including especially-commissioned work by recent Royal College of Art textile and jewellery graduates, Henry Hussey and Tanvi Kant. The public programme aims to stimulate dialogue on how My Nature holds a mirror to artists’ interpretations, inner worlds, perceptions, expressions and the external world. This offers further discourse on complex interconnected design thinking that illuminates broader cultural roles, responsibilities and effects in view of textile design, interpretation and environmental impact. 

My Nature is devised and curated by the director of The Slow Textiles Group, artist Emma Neuberg. The Slow Textiles Group, an independent platform promoting contemporary textile design and textile designers as vehicle for stimulating new language, discourse, vision and cultural value, supports the project.