Counterparts: Expanded Textile Practices | Hannah Gartside Britt Salt

16 November 2024 - 16 February 2025

Gallery 1

In 2023, Britt Salt, artist and final year Master of Fine Art student at the Victoria College of Arts was paired with VCA alumna, artist Hannah Gartside. So began a friendship over a cup of tea, and a conceptual interrogation of practice. While differing in their material outcomes and thematic explorations, both artists celebrate the medium of textiles and extend the practice through a play with space, movement, intimacy, curiosity and interaction with the body.

Counterparts: Expanded Textile Practices features new work by both artists in conversation, alongside formative work held in the Wangaratta Art Gallery Collection and the extension of previous bodies of work. Using these earlier ideas as a foreground to later practice, large scale textile installations transform the gallery space, and trace the development of each artist’s practice, their similarities and deviations and their shared influence.

Hannah Gartside, The Sleepover, 2018-2019, found nighties and slips c.1965-1980 (detail), found synthetic fabric and cotton ribbon, milliner’s wire, thread (with assistance from Monika Holgar, Louise Meuwissen, Melanie Ward, Kate Woodcroft), 670 x 280 x 210cm. Britt Salt, Living Grid II (Install view), 2023, Cotton and stained plywood. Photo courtesy of the University of Melbourne. Hannah Gartside, Dissolved Nightie in Lilac (detail) 2019, silk fabric, gifted nightie (from Louise), thread, timber, paint, 220 x 66 x 6cm. Wangaratta Art Gallery Collection.