Award winning textile artists to show at Wangaratta Art Gallery
Published on 01 November 2024
This summer, Wangaratta Art Gallery will exhibit innovative contemporary textile work by award winning Melbourne artists Hannah Gartside and Britt Salt. Opening on 16 November, Counterparts: Expanded Textile Practices, explores broad themes of the body, memory, and space, contemplating how fabric and textiles engage us, and interact with us.
Wangaratta Art Gallery Director, Rachel Arndt:
“We are excited to showcase two of Australia’s most innovative textile artists, working with the medium in new and expanded ways. 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. The two artists met in 2023, when 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, Gartside. So began a friendship over a cup of tea, and an interrogation of the artistic concepts that inform their individual art practices.
The two artists met in 2023, when 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, Gartside. So began a friendship over a cup of tea, and an interrogation of the artistic concepts that inform their individual art practices. 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.
Hannah 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.
Britt 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 8-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 Gartside’s work from both shows and Salt’s work was collected in 2021.
Wangaratta Art Gallery Director, Rachel Arndt:
“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. 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.”
Counterparts
16 November 2024 to 16 February 2025
Gallery 1, Wangaratta Art Gallery, l56 Ovens Street, Wangaratta.
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 10am - 4pm.
Artist Talks @ Wangaratta Art Gallery
Saturday 16 November
2.30pm in Gallery 1 | Hannah Gartside and Britt Salt discuss Counterparts
10.30am in Gallery 2 | Carole Wilson and Tim Craker discuss Material Implications
All welcome. To book your free ticket, please visit: www.wangarattaartgallery.com.au
Media Enquiries:
Hannah Gartside and Britt Salt will be at Wangaratta Art Gallery Tuesday 14 – Thursday 16 November, and are available for interviews in person or via phone. Other dates/times may also be requested.
For further information about this media release, please contact Gallery Director, Rachel Arndt on r.arndt@wangaratta.vic.gov.au