Textiles talk. Their colours can be loud, their textures can tell of where they have been, and their threads travel to hold fabric and stories together. Last month, skilled textile artist-storytellers convened at The Third International Art Textile Biennale in East Gippsland Art Gallery, Bairnsdale, Victoria. Created and organised by Fibre Arts Australia, the latest iteration of this progressive art event has come a long way since its inaugural show in 2021. In the exhibition catalogue, Glenys Mann describes the show as a “vibrant testament to the power of art textiles.” As founder of Fibre Arts Australia, she is rightfully proud. The 2025 show will tour nine regional Australian galleries for twenty months (in contrast to the three-venue, six-month run of the inaugural 2021 edition). It is commendable that contemporary textiles are being exhibited in regional galleries, allowing these parallel spaces—to metropolitan institutions—to challenge traditional art world hierarchies that otherwise relegate regional galleries to passive sites. Through the Biennale, Fibre Arts Australia makes a strong statement about and showcases the full breadth of textile practices by redefining what makes a textile artwork. This alone makes a compelling case for a visit.

The exhibition’s title, with the phrase “art textiles” (as opposed to textile art), subtly yet significantly emphasises the artistic intent of textile expressions. Accordingly, it is committed to promoting diversity through a variety of materials, techniques, forms, and thematic considerations. The artworks push the limits of textile materials by including rubber, metal sheets, ceramic, paper, and found objects while simultaneously using these materials in interesting and unexpected ways. There is no apparent conceptual thread connecting the forty-two artworks. This multiplicity, however, is not as problematic as the lack of engagement with the deeper cultural, historical, and political dimensions that textile art carries. As a result the works, though visually riveting, do not feel anchored to the broader and nuanced conversations about identity, land, resistance, and tradition that give textile art its power.

Australian artist Kristi Biezaite’s interactive performance installation Yearlong Thread (2024) exemplifies these layered meanings. The artwork comprises yarn made with almost two kilograms of a single sheep’s wool. The artist spun and naturally dyed the wool, inviting the viewers to spend time knitting the yarn in the gallery space (needles are provided). Biezaite encourages the viewer to engage materially with the land where the sheep grazed and the dyes were obtained by collectively and communally creating fabric. The yarn carries the rhythms and memory of the Country from which it has been drawn, its water bodies, the movement of its pasture livestock and more crucially, it holds cultural knowledge for sustainable textile practices that go back thousands of years. The artwork also taps into textile production as a communal undertaking, which we can see even today through quilting bees, knitting and crochet circles and weaving cooperatives. However, the artist has overlooked the certainty that not everyone can (or wants to) knit. Alternative means of wielding the yarn (weaving, winding, wrapping, knotting) could have struck a better balance between artistic creativity and inclusivity, allowing the invitation to connect to Country and community to be open to everyone.

Another artwork that investigates memory, place, and identity is British artist Caren Garfen’s Moral Compass (2024), a ghostly, unfinished sculpture highlighting worldwide instances of antisemitism. The artist embroiders details of attacks (including their location and date) onto compass faces. Tellingly, as indicated in the caption, Garfen believes the work is incomplete because of the ongoing and alarming frequency with which these attacks occur. The haunting power of this work lies in the artist’s slow, meticulous, delicate, and intimate embroidery practice, which starkly contrasts with the documented intolerance, injustice, and violence, transforming otherwise dry statistical data into a tangible, personal and inescapable actuality. However, the work appears to engage with incidents of antisemitism as isolated events, without considering the fraught conditions in which antisemitism has reared its ugly head in Australia today—most obviously, the Israel/Palestine conflict. By not acknowledging the complexities of these entangled crises, and the related waves of Islamophobia or other forms of bigotry, the work remains unfortunately narrow in scope.

While the craftsmanship of the artworks remains impeccable, all the artworks in the exhibition have been positioned against the gallery’s walls. Textile sculptures on pedestals, which should have been accessible from all sides, were also victims of similar treatment. This restrictive display diminishes textiles’ dynamic tactile, visual, and sensory qualities by discounting the interactive and spatial experience they can offer. The towering sculptural work by French artist Adeine Contreras, standing over six feet tall and employing a combination of materials (jute, twine, and ceramic) and techniques (wicker and crochet), has been exhibited against the wall, which flattens the artwork and makes it appear decorative. By disregarding the artwork’s commanding physical presence, the viewer becomes a mere observer, and the work’s potential to envelop the viewer—whereby the viewer can be “in” the artwork—is obscured. Another work that falls prey to this wall display strategy is American artist Beth Krensky’s Robe of Remembrance and Return (2024). As the exhibition catalogue notes, the work has two sides. Yet, strangely, only one side of the artwork is visible in the gallery, leaving the viewer fragmented by half an encounter.

The artworks are also displayed much too close together on the gallery walls, without enough space between them to breathe. This makes it challenging to contemplate the works conceptually while also examining their intricate details, textures, and materials—a condition textile artworks demand from the viewer. While one of the Biennale’s functions is to be an extensive showcase of art textiles, the sheer volume of art packed into the gallery compromises the viewer’s experience. The risk of the viewer being overwhelmed can be mitigated by allowing some works to move off the wall to take residence within the room itself, facilitating a more encompassing, reflective experience while resolving the artworks’ apparent two-dimensional mode of display.

Organiser Mann writes movingly in The Third International Art Textile Biennale catalogue that the “biennale is not just an exhibition; it is a platform for dialogue and exploration.” This prompts a reconsideration of how we can connect to the artworks, especially when every stitch, fabric layer, and pattern is a deliberate attempt to evoke an emotion, narrate a story, and convey historical, cultural or even personal meaning. By responding to touch, place, and time, textiles transcend their status as objects, provoking thought and becoming experiences. It is these experiences that talk quietly in the exhibition. Considering the plurality of voices, materials, techniques, and themes in the show, these art textiles should not merely speak but shout to make themselves heard. The din should stimulate a powerful, intense, and yet unsettling visceral reaction. Mann’s passion and dedication have seen this Biennale through three editions, but bolder, unconventional, and fearless curatorial decisions will genuinely inspire a cacophony.