Pushing The Limits

Image: Anni Albers. Black White Yellow (detail), 1926/1964. Victoria and Albert Museum.

Textile artist Olivier Masson and textile activist Lala de Dios are organising a virtual shaft weaving art exhibition, Pushing the Limits. They hope to feature shaft loom weavers from all over the world and are asking people to submit their work in an open call for entries, which ends 15 November. Participation is free. From the backstrap loom to dobby looms, the history of weaving has been an uninterrupted succession of technological inventions. Today we are living in the Jacquard digital loom era, but many artists and designers are happily enjoying weaving in shaft looms as weavers have been doing for hundreds of years. Not only to weave the functional textiles so often associated with the machine, but also to create works of art; from Anni Albers to Peter Collingwood, to give two well-known examples from the last century. 

Image: Peter Collingwood, M191 No.1 (detail), Macro Gauze Weaving, 1987.

The curators of the exhibition want to highlight the unlimited possibilities of this limited ‘machine’ to create textile art and are looking for unique pieces handwoven on a multi-shaft loom. The selected works will be exhibited in a 3D online exhibition which opens 1 December. Olivier Masson is a French textile artist. He works on geometric designs inspired by shaft weaving. In 1987, with François Roussel, he published the book, Shaft weaving and graph design - a systematical exploitation of graphic possibilities of shaft weaving - and in 1985 created the textile software Pointcarré.

Image: Olivier Masson, Kyoto.

Lala de Dios, based in Spain, is a historian of art by education and a vocational weaver. She designs and produces shaft weaving textiles, teaches and organizes textile exhibitions, conferences and educational events.

For more information visit www.oliviermasson.art