WANGARATTA Art Gallery is preparing to exhibit innovative contemporary textile work by award winning Melbourne artists Hannah Gartside and Britt Salt.
Opening this Saturday, November 16, 'Counterparts: Expanded Textile Practices', explores broad themes of the body, memory and space, contemplating how fabric and textiles engage us, and interact with us.
“We are excited to showcase two of Australia’s most innovative textile artists, working with the medium in new and expanded ways,” Wangaratta Art Gallery director, Rachel Arndt, said.
“Hannah Gartside and Britt Salt are both able to convey complex ideas through their wall-based works and large-scale installations – Hannah transforms found fabrics and clothing into imaginative works that address lived-experience, desire, longing, and tenderness while Britt explores notions of form and space by gently shifting her viewers’ movement and interaction through spatial installations and sculpture.”
While their work is very different, both artists celebrate the medium of textiles and extend contemporary textile practice through a play with space, movement, intimacy, curiosity, and interaction with the body.
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The two artists met in 2023, when Ms Salt was in her final year of her Master of Fine Art at the Victoria College of Arts (VCA) and was paired with VCA alumna, Ms Gartside.
So began a friendship over a cup of tea, and an interrogation of the artistic concepts that inform their individual art practices.
Ms Gartside was recently announced as the recipient of the prestigious Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship valued at over $70,000.
She was included in Primavera 2021: Young Australian Artists, one of the most significant art exhibitions for emerging artists in the country, held each year at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
Her work was also commissioned for the National Gallery of Victoria’s Melbourne Now 2023 exhibition which features Melbourne’s most iconic contemporary artists.
Ms Salt is known for her bold and exploratory public art which can be seen across the world, including in the Taopu Smart City headquarters, Shanghai, Tsinghua University, Beijing, and a fourteen-metre-long sculptural relief at the Melbourne International Airport.
Her eight storey façade for Fender Katsalidis Architects in Melbourne is said to be the largest public artwork in the Southern Hemisphere, spanning nearly 3000 square metres.
She has received prestigious awards such as the Art & Australia Emerging Artist Award, the Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship, and Highly Commended in the Kate Derum Award.
Both artists have been finalists in the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award - Hannah Gartside in 2017 and 2019 and Salt in 2019, 2021 and 2023.
Wangaratta Art Gallery acquired Ms Gartside’s work from both shows and Ms Salt’s work was collected in 2021.
“We are very lucky to hold works from each of these artists in our gallery collection and these works will be on display as part of the exhibition,” Ms Arndt said.
“We feel certain that, given the popularity of these two artists, this exhibition will attract local and interstate visitors alike, bringing many art-loving visitors and textile enthusiasts to our region.”
Ms Gartside and Ms Salt will be giving an artist talk at the exhibitions official opening on November 16 at 2.30pm in Gallery 1.
Tickets to the opening can be found at www.wangarattaartgallery.com.au.
The exhibition will be opening from November 16 to February 16, 2025.
