The Craft Collective

The Craft Collective (2017), Wellington. A collaboration between textile designers, a photographer and spacial designer. The exhibition explored individual skill sets creating an inviting and educational exhibition that showcased the processes of textile design, through film and physical works.

As designers, we are always curious about how something is made. We wonder about the techniques, the tools and the process behind the final design.

Three of our team members are textile designers and we often experience a lot of misconceptions surrounding our craft, with the majority of these misconceptions relating to the time and effort that different skills take, and the often long processes behind them. Textile design includes a range of different skills including (but not limited to) knitting, weaving, embroidery, sublimate, screen printing, digital print, acid dye, natural dye and felting. All of these processes involve hours of preparation and specific knowledge, with most of this knowledge only being known and understood by the designer / practitioner / maker. And we believe this to be one of the main reasons why there are so many misconceptions.

Our exhibition aimed to address these misconceptions, with education at it’s forefront.

VIDEO OF SETTING UP A TABLE LOOM

Three videos where played at the exhibition; Sam showing the screen printing process; Sydney using the embroidery machine; and myself setting up a loom (shown in the video below).

Many textile processes are derived from centuries old traditions. This knowledge has been passed through generations and is preserved through teaching and learning. The films shown, combined with live demonstrations were used to educate and inspire our audience.

Exhibition Host: The Neighbourhood Studio Wellington