THE FINE ART TEXTILES AWARD 2023 opens for entries
The Fine Art Textiles Award is now open for entries for 2023.
Now in its fifth year, The Fine Art Textiles Award is an international juried exhibition open to all amateur and practising artists using textiles as their primary medium. The award recognises the creative talents and skills of a broad community of high-calibre artists, including quilters, producing gallery-quality fine art.
The winner will be announced at The Awards Ceremony at The Festival of Quilts at the NEC Birmingham on Thursday 3rd August at 12.30pm, and will receive a prize of £5,000. An award for Innovative Use of Textiles will be presented to an artist whose work demonstrates a particularly complex and/or powerful approach to the use of textiles, with a prize of £500.
The judging panel for The Fine Art Textiles Award 2023 includes: Grant Gibson, one of the UK’s leading design writers and commentators and founder of the Material Matters podcast and fair; Jo Hall, writer, curator, editor and consultant; James Hunting, textile artist and educator; Ptolemy Mann, textile artist; Maggie Scott, textile artist and activist; and Angie Wyman, Course Leader for the Royal School of Needlework Degree in Hand Embroidery.
Shortlisted entries will feature in an exhibition at The Festival of Quilts at the NEC Birmingham from 3 – 6 August 2023, and at The Knitting & Stitching Shows in London (5 – 8 October 2023) and Harrogate (16 – 19 November 2023).
Entry criteria for The Fine Art Textiles Award stipulate that work must transcend its craft or making process, standing alone as visual art, and must be clearly rooted in and reflecting of the artist’s inspiration, source, concept or idea, with cloth and thread playing a dominant role. Works can be 2D or 3D, with the exception of garments, unless those garments present as fine art. Entries must have been made within 24 months prior to 22nd May 2023, and must not have been shown at any major exhibition in the UK (juried, solo, group or otherwise).
The 2022 winner of The Fine Art Textiles Award was the American conceptual artist, Jess Blaustein, for Table Settings, a two-sided quilted wall hanging made from recycled household linens, and featuring pencil and stitched tracings accumulated by a single dinner table over a period of four weeks.
Judging panel member, Jo Hall, said: “Its simplicity speaks powerfully to the associations that exist between the worlds of domesticity and textiles, exploring this relationship in a thought-provoking way and in a beautifully understated approach.”
The award for Most Innovative Use of Textiles in 2022 was Tanya Bentham for The Three Living and The Three Dead 2021, a modern take on early medieval embroidery or Opus Anglicanum.
Previous winners of The Fine Art Textiles Award are Woo Jin Joo (2021), Shelly Goldsmith (2020) and Ann Goddard (2019). Most Innovative Use of Textiles awards have been presented to Laura Thomas (2021), Marie Jones (2020) and Marilyn Rathbone (2019).
Full information about The Fine Art Textiles Award 2023 can be found on The Festival of Quilts website at: www.thefestivalofquilts.co.uk/the-fine-art-textiles-award/. The deadline for entries is Monday 22nd May 2023.
For further information, please contact:
Julie Parmenter
Brampton PR
T: +44 (0)7775 715936
E: jparmenter@hotmail.co.uk
About The Fine Art Textiles Award
The Fine Art Textiles Award is an international juried exhibition open to all amateur and practicing artists using textiles as their medium. The Fine Art Textiles Award recognises the creative talents and skills of a broad community of high-calibre artists (including quilters) and celebrates textiles’ rightful place amongst high art.
About the Festival of Quilts
The Festival of Quilts is Europe’s ultimate quilting destination, featuring extraordinary galleries from international artists and groups, 700 competition quilts, an extensive programme of talks and workshops, and more than 200 exhibitors offering essential supplies. The Festival takes place from 3rd-6th August 2023 at the NEC Birmingham (Halls 7, 8 and 9). Opening hours are 9.30am-5.30pm daily (closes 5pm Sunday).
