The Geometrics: Volume 1 puts contemporary textiles on the map of critical discourse.
The Geometrics' artists trained in Textile Design and work with this tactile knowledge to create film, sculpture, textiles and garments both analogue and digital.
The work has been shown at the Hayward Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum and the Science Museum, London, indicating the diversity of context, narrative, nuance and cultural meaning.
"Embedded within The Geometrics' work is complexity, multiplicity and symbolic language. Words are not enough to express the plethora of hues, ambiences and interactions that exist in subjective and social experience. The moving image, layering of parts and colour simultaneity are all enticing expressions of the complexity of psychology, thought and being. The driving forces that lie behind the creation of all this tactile activity demonstrate the need to express that which is beyond words," Emma Neuberg, director of the Slow Textiles Group, writes on the STG blog.
Perhaps this is why textiles have yet to be analysed as a contemporary medium beyond fashion, domesticity and ethnography. The Geometrics (Volumes 1, 2, 3..) start the conversation.
Daisy McMullan, curator, and Dr Emma Neuberg, Slow Textiles Group
Daisy McMullan is an independent curator. With a background in fine art, she completed an MA in curating at Chelsea College of Art & Design 2011/12. Following the MA, she was awarded the Ashley Family Foundation Research Fellowship at CHELSEA space, Chelsea College of Art & Design for 2012/13. She currently works at CHELSEA space, assisting with the exhibitions, events and public programme. She also co-curated an exhibition at CHELSEA space's sister gallery, Chelsea Futurespace.
McMullan has worked on various projects, both commercial and not-for-profit, including curating the Young Masters Art Prize 2012 in two parts. The Prize celebrates emerging artists and their relationship to art history and the work of the Old Masters. She is currently working on a series of events for the Young Masters Project for 2013, including a series of exhibitions, art fairs and events.
www.daisymcmullan.com
Dr Emma Neuberg is founder and director of the Slow Textiles Group. The group actively engages in co-research processes for textile design, making and practice in Great Britain today. The independent platform pioneers a new model for open source visual, material and creative practice outside the walls of academia and industrial R&D departments.
Neuberg graduated from the Royal College of Art with a PhD in Constructed Textiles in 2000. An artist (Young Masters Art Prize and Jerwood Makers Prize nominee) and External Examiner at the Royal College of Art, she works to establish an independent space for textile design dialogue, ideation, community and collaboration.
One of the central tenets of John Thakara's sustainable design futures tome, In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World , is helping real people, in real places.
The Slow Textiles Group is founded upon this.
www.slowtextiles.blogspot.com
