Interlaced: Animation and Textiles

Artists: Faig Ahmed, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Jon Michael Corbett, Kelly Egan, Sione Faletau, Footprints Studio, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Marguerite Harris, Aubrey Longley-Cook, Len Lye, Jodie Mack, Lindsay McIntyre, Huw Messie, Miracle de Mille, Ng’endo Mukii, Kate Nartker, Ishu Patel, Pathé studio, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, Harry Smith, Studio Zeitguised, Caitlin Thompson, Vaimaila Urale, Jennifer West, Jordan Wong, Shaheer Zazai.

Curator: Dr Alla Gadassik

Interlaced: Animation and Textiles is the first major exhibition dedicated to the reciprocal relationship between these two artforms. Spanning the gallery and cinema spaces of the Len Lye Centre, Interlaced brings together moving-image works fashioned from textile materials and patterns alongside fibre works inspired by visual transformations made possible by animation. Artists featured in the exhibition explore ways of embroidering with projected light, quilting celluloid films, and weaving digital tapestries. By braiding together contemporary animation and textile art, Interlaced highlights the influence of textile history and culture on artisanal media production.

The work of renown experimental filmmaker Len Lye (1901–1980) plays an important connective role in the exhibition. Interlaced makes a compelling case for the influence of Pacific tapa design and British textile production on Lye’s innovative animation techniques. Nesting Len Lye’s animated films in a broader field of analogue and digital media, Interlaced explores the enduring capacity of textile forms to make visible animating forces and to reanimate intergenerational cultural memory.

A lavishly illustrated accompanying publication containing a major essay from the curator will be available to purchase online from the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery shop from April 2025.

Media enquiries: Antony Rhodes, antony.rhodes [​at​] npdc.govt.nz