What Can Textiles Teach Us?

The Goldsmiths Textile Collection, at Goldsmiths College, London University is developing a collaborative research project led by Grant Watson and Jorella Andrews. The collection was stablished in the 1980s by the Art Department as a teaching collection and became a research centre in 2002 with a focus on radical embroidery, textile art, socially engaged practice and global textiles, including from South Asia and the Balkans. This current research departs from the question - what can textile teach us? It will look at textiles as a primary source of interdisciplinary knowledge concerning political economies, cultural identity and the aesthetics of colour, pattern and form. As this is a handling collection, it will also explore the elements of touch, making, material experimentation and a phenomenological approach to learning.

A wider context for this research is to consider the regeneration of the teaching of art, design and the humanities, as well as curriculum development. Dating back to the 1940s, textiles at Goldsmiths developed a conceptually driven approach which challenged the boundaries of this medium. Sitting within an educational context that included fine art, music, drama, politics, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, student work addressed textiles including in relation to identity, race, gender, the politics of cloth as well as the boundary between art and non-art.

This research began with a three month pilot internal to the college that took place between April and June 2023. It involved two open call study days in the collection, and interviews conducted with current and former members of staff including Jorella Andrews (Professor in Visual Cultures) Jane Cameron (Curator of the Goldsmiths Textile Collection) Janis Jefferies (Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts at the Department of Computing) Susan Kelly (Senior Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies) as well as the artist and writer Osman Yousefzada. Qualitative interviews addressed the question – what can textiles teach us? This was discussed in relation to individual  practice and selected materials from the collection.

Workshop documentation,
the Goldsmiths Textile Collection, June 22, 2023
photography by Jorella Andrews