New Exuberance: Contemporary Australian Textile Design

10 July – 16 August 2025

Australian Design Centre presents this JamFactory touring exhibition bringing together contemporary design, art, and fashion through textiles.

Textile design today is a vibrant boundary-blurring creative field. By its very nature, it cross-pollinates. Moving through disciplines – graphic, furniture and product design, fashion and the visual arts – it manifests as surface patterning, material experimentation and transfiguration, storytelling and conceptual ideas.

Despite the hardships of recent years, Australian textile-based practices are flourishing. Makers are finding renewed confidence in community-driven interest, co-creation, and inclusivity. Collaborations in the fashion industry are on the increase, forged by creatives such as Romance Was Born, Iordanes Spyridon Gogos, Grace Lillian Lee and initiatives such as First Nations Fashion + Design. The skyrocketing visibility within First Nations practices is partly due to the passionate vision of new enterprises and reinforced by the meaningful and covetable textile designs being produced by artists in Top End and remote art centres and collectives. In line with these developments, and urgent sustainability concerns, the artisanal ethos is gaining agency.

New Exuberance celebrates the work of more than 30 textile creatives and includes commissioned furniture pieces produced by designers associated with JamFactory to acknowledge the rich diversity of textile-based practices in contemporary art, design and fashion in this country now.

Contemporary textile design is a vibrant boundary-blurring creative field. By nature, it cross-pollinates. Moving through disciplines - graphic, furniture and product design,

fashion and the visual arts - it manifests as surface patterning, material experimentation and transfiguration, storytelling and conceptual ideas.

In the context of our times and years marked by many competing crises, creative work concerned with connection, authenticity and the trace of the hand, has become

all the more important. Australian textile-based practices are thriving. Collaborations in the fashion industry are on the increase. The visibility of First Nations creatives is also skyrocketing, partly due to the passionate vision of new enterprises and reinforced by the covetable designs being produced by Top End artists, remote art centres and collectives.

Eclectic and multidisciplinary, the creatives in this exhibition bring resourcefulness, reflection and spirited invention to the fore. New Exuberance celebrates them and acknowledges the rich diversity of textile-based practices in art, design and fashion in this country today.

Meryl Ryan Curator

Artists:
Bábbarra Women’s Centre, Frida Las Vegas, Grace Lillian Lee, Hannah Gartside, Ikuntji Artists, Iordanes Spyridon Gogos, Jemima Wyman, Kate Just, Lisa Waup X Verner, Nina Walton, Nixi Killick, Paul Mccann, Romance Was Born, The Social Studio X Among Atem X Romance Was Born, Tiwi Design, Vita Cochran, Wah-Wah Australia.

Events:
Exhibitions Launch - New Exuberance: Contemporary Australian Textile Design | Drop Let
Australian Design Centre presents two new major exhibitions launching on 10 July.
When: Thursday 10 July, 6-8pm
Where: Australian Design Centre
Free Event, Bookings essential

New Exuberance: Floor Talk
This floor talk event presents an introduction to New Exuberance: Contemporary Australian Textile Design with Australian Design Centre CEO and Artistic Director, Lisa Cahill.
When: Saturday 12 July, 6-8pm
Where: Australian Design Centre
Free Event, Bookings essential

Make a Rag Rug with Vita Cochran
Part of New Exuberance and ADC's Winter Workshop Series 2025, make a handmade rug using recycled woollen materials with textile artist Vita Cochran.
When: Friday 1 August, 1.30pm - 4.30pm
Where: Australian Design Centre
Tickets: Bookings essential

Image top: Hannah Gartside, Illusion Quilt (video still),2020, HD video, duration 3:18 mins. Commissioned by McCarthy-Swann Projects. Image: Courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.