Conceived in 2023, the 5th Tamworth Textile Triennial: Residue + Response has been re-staged at Manly Art Gallery & Museum for 2025. The Triennial, which showcases 25 diverse artworks, considers what contemporary textiles can be. Bridget Guthrie, director of Tamworth Regional Gallery (TRG) acknowledges this iteration was born from the question: “what different voices need to be heard?”
First Nations Curator Dr Carol McGregor took an artist-focused approach, ensuring ample time for making and engaging in deep conversation with all artists. McGregor, who wanted the Triennial to consider social changes, explains her, “curatorial premise began with exploring residues of change, asking each artist: has there been a shift in where you, or we, place ourselves as a result of recent global/local events?”
As part of the exhibition, five established artists supported five emerging artists. This enabled vibrant partnerships, such as that between Paula do Prado and Tamara Burlando. Their installation, Meet me by the river (2023), draws together their respective Huarpe and Charrúa ancestors. Deeply grounded in place, the work was created in connection with their shared ancestral waterways, the Dela Plata and Uruguay rivers, as well as the lands and waterways on which they live and created the work: the heath swamps of Gadigal Country, Calala on Kamilaroi/Gomeroi Country and Lerhe Mparntwe on Arrernte Country.
A key artist in the exhibition, synonymous with the profound textile legacy of TRG, is Sybil Orr—a Tamworth local who inspired McGregor. Orr has repurposed materials from past works created in the 1970s to produce Beach head (2023). Beach head is a cautionary tale that speaks to our ongoing human complicity within the threat of the climate crisis.
“Textiles are part of everyday life,” McGregor notes. “By elevating textiles conceptually, coupled with expertise through making, the medium becomes accessible in new ways.” Residue and Response presents textiles as a medium ripe for critical current and future enquiry.
Residue + Response: 5th Tamworth Textile Triennial
Manly Art Gallery & Museum
21 February–6 April
This article was originally published in the March/April 2025 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
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