Julie Montgarrett: jmontgarrett@csu.edu.au

It is no accident that some of the works of the last century which remain the most resonant are those which utilised textile and textile-like materials. Duchamp, Beuys and others, recognised that an object's materiality had a powerful expressiveness that far exceeded the interpreted, imitated versions in paint, stone and print.1 Despite this recognition, perhaps a more remarkable revolution than that of Abstraction, Textile remains marginalised, camouflaged by its familiarity and its close association with the decorative. Textile's sheer hybridity denies conformity and celebrates difference, making categorisation in relation to mainstream arts practice difficult - one reason Textile has been appropriated extensively in recent years by artists from outside the discipline. Textile as 'other' retains a subversive potential ­ its intimate role in commonplace human experience, its universal codes and functions slipping effectively across cultural divides in the ceaseless disruptions, transmissions, and translations within the mega-visual communication systems of this era. Textile is most significantly an excellent courier for perceptions and communication which language cannot capture.

"Here at Perce on the coast of the Gaspe Peninsula, the beach is crowded from morning to evening with the young and the old, the rich and the poor, all searching for raw agates washed in by the tide.

These small stones whose generally dull appearance is fully compensated for by the flashes of light they cast, sometimes only fleetingly, when viewed from a particular angle. But who knows what special ingredient carried within these flashes of light immediately catches everyone's eye and so sets in motion the eager quest and the pleasure experienced anew each time a glance is intercepted?.........This leads me to think that we are present here at the source of one of the commonest and most urgent of human desires, which is indeed, nothing less than the desire to expand its consciousness through art even though the result of such expansion may seem indistinguishable from the commonplace." 2

1. Joseph Beuys, Felt Suit. 1970; Meret Oppenheim's , Object (Luncheon in Fur) 1936;
Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Bebe Marie), early 1940's; Javacheff Christo; Running Fence, 1970-72; Eva Hesse, Contingent 1968-69; Alberto Burri, Sacco, 1954;
Magdalena Abakanowicz; Backs, 1976-82; Robert Rauschenberg, Hoarfrost, 1976 to list a few.

2. Andre Breton, Surrealism and Painting; Harper & Row, NY. C.1965. p. 183