Close to You: Contemporary Textiles, Intimacy and Popular Culture

An examination of the use of idioms and images from popular culture in the work of contemporary textile artists from Canada and the United States. Participating artists Ai Kijima, Scott Kildall, Allyson Mitchell, Mark Newport and Michèle Provost explore popular myth, comic book heroics and contemporary social and sexual mores through their material practices of knitting, appliqué, embroidery and crochet. Their evident skill and craftsmanship acknowledges traditional craft values even as their cultural and critical sensibilities position them within more recent "neo-craft" practices.

Sarah Quinton is director of the Textile Museum of Canada.