More exhibitions – bumper edition

The big news in costume/textile exhibitions this month is the opening of the much-heralded Vivienne Westwood & Jewellery exhibition at Te Papa. For a couple of months, it’s an opportunity to see this side of Dame Vivienne’s prodigious creative sensibility and love of iconoclasm and of excess. The event programme alongside looks as though other people have been similarly excited – movies, feasts, opshopping! The great tradition of English eccentricity lives large in this grand dame’s legacy and we strongly encourage you to bling it up in homage when you go to see this slice of wit, history, and delight, on until 27 April.

To say that this is one of many exhibitions of interest is possibly an understatement. The handful of southern exhibitions noted before Christmas were just the start and there’s plenty further north. In Ashburton, artist Wesley John Hourie includes textiles in his mix of media; the centrepiece of his exhibition and with his kiss I became a braided river is the 1/100 scale analogy of Whakatere Ashburton river. Created over three years of 2100 metres of finger knitting, entangled as a metaphor for the multiple channels that make up this braided river, on until 21 February.

Christchurch residents and visitors are enjoying the opportunity to check out Lissy and Rudi Robinson-Cole’s Wharenui Harikoa. It’s a pop-up in a space on Gloucester street, and continues to radiate the joy and vibrancy that go hand in hand with the concept of a large-scale fluoro crochet wharenui. See it in its homeland while you can – it’s in Christchurch until 27 April, but it appears that longer journeys are looming in its future.

Nelson’s Suter Art Gallery is joining in the mahi with Material Matters, a survey show featuring seven textile artists with links to Te Waipounamu, running until 2 March. Among the work featuring here are pieces from Caroline McQuarrie’s installation How deep into the earth we sink, about which she spoke at last year’s symposium. Other artists in the mix include Marilyn Rea-Menzies, Bev Moon, and Deborah Walsh.

Caroline is not the only presenter from the 2024 symposium currently exhibiting around the motu. At Porirua’s Pātaka, current shows include the collaborative Rangirua, which includes work by keynote speaker Rowan Panther, and Boro – Timeworn Textiles of Japan, showing off Pip Steel’s collection of this specialised patching and stitching form. Both of these shows run until 9 March.

There’s always something to see at Opunake’s From out of the blue gallery; for January, it’s the invitational, On the beach, featuring textile and mixed media work by Alysn Midgelow-Marsden, Ailie Snow and Tracey Sullivan. From February to March, it’s Journeys – Our Way, in which the Kapiti Extensions Group Exhibition covers the challenge of using neutral-coloured fabrics as background for collage.

Onwards to New Plymouth, for an unexpected intersection of film and textile. Interlaced: Animation and Textiles starts with the link between Len Lye’s first work in London and the Hammersmith textile printing studio in which he was based at the time. Billed as ‘the first major global exhibition dedicated to the reciprocal relationship between these two artforms’, Interlaced includes fibre works made possible by animation, and moving-image works fashioned from textile materials and patterns, and using textile techniques like embroidery, quilting and digital weaving. Artists featured in the exhibition explore ways of embroidering with projected light, quilting celluloid films, and weaving digital tapestries. The result brings together contemporary animation and textile art, highlighting the ‘influence of textile history and culture on artisanal media production.’ Curated by Dr Alla Gadassik, this high-concept exhibition runs through to 27 April. Its credits include more than 20 artists, including of course Lye himself.

Te Whare Taonga o Waikato Museum & Gallery is also offering up new work; He Aa I Uta, He Aa I Tai: Weaving the Elements is billed as a ‘large-scale exhibition’ showcasing traditional and contemporary work by members of Te Roopu Raranga Whatu o Aotearoa, the national collective of Maaori weavers, supported by the master weavers group, Te Kāhui Whiritoi. This celebration of weaving draws inspiration from ‘our relationship with air, earth, fire, water and spirit’, and as it’s showing until 10 August, plenty of time left to view.

A final nod back to the symposium; Tairawhiti Museum is the latest stop for Ron Te Kawa’s Te Whare Pora: a sacred space. On until 23 February, these vibrant quilts made over the past few year continue to demonstrate Ron’s distinctively engaging craft and vision.

One more exhibition, not entirely costume or textile, but it seems a shame to leave Auckland out altogether (though there will be more to highlight there in coming months). How could an exhibition called Our Game: A Century of Netball in Aotearoa New Zealand, curated by Jane Groufsky as the museum and Netball New Zealand honoured the game’s centenary, not show off the very important issue of the development of the netball kit? It doesn’t, as Jane has made clear in a comprehensive and beguiling guide published by online magazine Ensemble The story of netball in Aotearoa, told through fashion. The gymfrocks we know about, but Osti frocks? It’s enough to make you want to get to the gallery before the exhibition closes on 18 February.

If it hasn’t been a good summer for being on the beach, at least it’s been a good one for the galleries, and this current run will continue through 2025. The next run of openings is February-March, and we’ll keep you posted.