Textile Museum - What Was On

I learned my lesson from the first round of lockdowns and in the summer and fall as museums and galleries opened up, I generally went to them right away.  Now I did not get out to Montreal, though that just involved too much travel around other people and then staying away from home for at least one night, which was just a bridge too far.  However, I was definitely planning on going out to Hamilton (perhaps somewhat enticed by the fact that it wasn't currently in lockdown), but Metrolinx completely cut Hamilton out of the network and a trip that used to take one hour (one-way) stretched to just under 3 hours, which was simply ridiculous.  At any rate, I'll take the next few weeks to post on what I saw, reliving the excitement when you could still go out and do and see things in the region.  After that maybe it will just be a few more weeks of hibernating and seeing if rates have come down enough by the spring that we can resume a bit of normalcy.

Today I will focus on the Textile Museum. There are two exhibits in place: Anna Torma: Permanent Danger (a show of large scale embroidered tapestries which runs through late March so there is a reasonable chance it will be possible to catch it in March, assuming the lockdown is lifted) and a group show of printed textiles from Inuit artists at Kinngait Studios.  The Intuit print show runs through June 1, so there is a better chance of seeing that in 2021.

The sheer amount of work that went into Anna Torma's pieces is quite incredible.  Here are a few that caught my attention.

Anna Torma, Fight 1, 2018

Anna Torma, Dionysia, 2020

The printed textiles exhibit reminded of the Artists textile show from 2015 (which apparently was organized by London's Fashion and Textile Museum.  Given the Canadian content of this show, I presume the Textile Museum organized it, though I don't know if it will travel or not.  There is a nice catalogue to accompany the exhibit, though it currently can only be ordered through the Textile Museum gift shop.

It would be difficult to pick the best fabrics.  In general I was a bit more interested in the repeating patterns and not quite as interested when they were transformed into dresses or curtains, to name just a few of the things seen in the show.

Hopefully this gives you a general sense of the exhibits that were on view and inspires you to go when it is deemed safe to do so again!