Curated by Blake Griffiths, Nature Machine brings together leading and emerging textile artists whose practices reflect the profound and often complex ways makers grapple with the complex relationship between hand, body and machine. With boldness and care, the exhibition asks: how can artists create in ways that sustain, rather than deplete, the materials and ecologies they work with?
The artists of Nature Machine experiment with growing, harvesting, recycling, and reimagining textile resources, while others turn to the virtual, embracing artificial intelligence and machine production to explore and challenge the changing role of textiles in a technological age.
From permaculture to programming, each artist demonstrates how making can become a form of ecological stewardship; their material innovations and technical mastery revealing not only the ingenuity of Australian textile practice today but also, the deep responsibility artists feel toward the environments that sustain them.
The exhibition celebrates the diverse ways artists are responding to urgent environmental concerns, protecting traditions, revaluing craft knowledge, and proposing new ways of living with, and making from, the world around us.
The Tamworth Textile Triennial has a rich history beginning with competitive art exhibitions organised by the Tamworth Arts and Craft Society in the 1960s. These early exhibitions grew into a nationally significant event that has, for over fifty years, championed fibre and textile arts in Australia. Today, the Triennial stands as the most important platform for contemporary textile practice in the country - providing a vital space for artists to explore pressing ideas, connect with audiences, and to continue to sustain, and celebrate the National Textile Collection.