Now in its third year and with a brand new sponsor, The Janome Fine Art Textiles Award is an international juried exhibition open to all amateur and practising artists using textiles, cloth and thread as their primary medium. The award recognises the creative talents and skills of a broad community of high-calibre textile artists producing gallery-quality high art.
The winner will be announced at The Awards Ceremony at The Festival of Quilts at the NEC Birmingham on Thursday 29th July from 12.30pmin The Festival Theatre, where they will receive a £5,000 prize. An award for Innovative Use of Textiles, sponsored by Her Quiet Materials,will also be awarded for a work that clearly demonstrates a particularly complex and/or powerful approach to the use of textiles, with a prize of £500.
The 2021 award judges are established textile artists Anya Paintsil, Cos Ahmet and Karen Nicol, and art academics and curators Dr. Christine Checinska (V&A), Uthra Rajgopal and Jo Hall. Shortlisted entries will be exhibited in a dedicated gallery at The Festival of Quilts at the NEC Birmingham from 29th July-1st August, with further exhibitions planned for The Knitting & Stitching Show in London and Harrogate this autumn.
Award entries must reflect the artist’s inspiration, source, concept or idea, with a fully resolved composition that transcends its craft or making process and stands alone as visual art. Work can be 2D or 3D with the exception of garments, unless they present as fine art. All disciplines, processes and media are welcome so long as the key, pivotal materials are textiles. Processes can include, but are not limited to, hand and/or machine stitch, weaving, collage or piecing, wrapping or binding, thread ‘drawing’, surface design, knitting and crochet, and elements such as dyes, discharge media, paint, paper, resin and wax can be incorporated.
Previous winners of The Fine Art Textiles Award are Shelly Goldsmith (Locus of the Dress, 2020) andAnn Goddard (On the Brink, 2019). Most Innovative Use of Textiles awards have been presented to Marie Jones (Daring Greatly, 2020) and Marilyn Rathbone (Self-Avoiding Walk, 2019).
Full information about The Janome Fine Art Textiles Award 2021 can be found on The Festival of Quilts website
©2021 Janome Fine Art Textiles Award
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