Material Worlds: Contemporary Artists and Textiles explores how artists are using textiles in surprising and radical ways. Illuminating the diverse roles textiles play in contemporary artistic practice, the exhibition brings together artists who take the intimate, everyday and domestic quality of textiles and transform them into theatrical, bold, unsettling and humorous artworks that create worlds and tell stories ranging from the personal to the cosmic.

Curated by artist Caroline Achaintre with Hayward Gallery Touring, the exhibition will feature work created predominantly over the last decade by 15 UK-based artists. The featured works highlight the cultural history of textiles and a shared desire to challenge its traditional associations, testing the material’s expansive and subversive potential. The familiar fabric of everyday life is reimagined into the unexpected—the ordinary made extraordinary—to reflect on ideas of gender, identity, community, race, technology, and myth, demonstrating the medium’s potential to transform in the hands of different artists.