NATURE MACHINE | 6TH TAMWORTH TEXTILE TRIENNIAL
19.09.2026 - 22.11.2026
(Touring nationally until 2029)
Tamworth Regional Gallery (exhibition website)
466 Peel Street
Tamworth AU
Curated by Blake Griffiths
Nature Machine brings together leading and emerging textile artists whose practices reflect the profound and often complex ways makers grapple with the complex relationship between hand, body and machine. With boldness and care, the exhibition asks: how can artists create in ways that sustain, rather than deplete, the materials and ecologies they work with? The artists of Nature Machine experiment with growing, harvesting, recycling, and reimagining textile resources, while others turn to the virtual, embracing artificial intelligence and machine production to explore and challenge the changing role of textiles in a technological age.
From permaculture to programming, each artist demonstrates how making can become a form of ecological stewardship; their material innovations and technical mastery revealing not only the ingenuity of Australian textile practice today but also, the deep responsibility artists feel toward the environments that sustain them.
The exhibition celebrates the diverse ways artists are responding to urgent environmental concerns, protecting traditions, revaluing craft knowledge, and proposing new ways of living with, and making from, the world around us.
19.09.2026 - 22.11.2026
(Touring nationally until 2029)
Tamworth Regional Gallery (exhibition website)
466 Peel Street
Tamworth AU
Curated by Blake Griffiths
Nature Machine brings together leading and emerging textile artists whose practices reflect the profound and often complex ways makers grapple with the complex relationship between hand, body and machine. With boldness and care, the exhibition asks: how can artists create in ways that sustain, rather than deplete, the materials and ecologies they work with? The artists of Nature Machine experiment with growing, harvesting, recycling, and reimagining textile resources, while others turn to the virtual, embracing artificial intelligence and machine production to explore and challenge the changing role of textiles in a technological age.
From permaculture to programming, each artist demonstrates how making can become a form of ecological stewardship; their material innovations and technical mastery revealing not only the ingenuity of Australian textile practice today but also, the deep responsibility artists feel toward the environments that sustain them.
The exhibition celebrates the diverse ways artists are responding to urgent environmental concerns, protecting traditions, revaluing craft knowledge, and proposing new ways of living with, and making from, the world around us.
Artists
Abdullah M. I. Syed | Alycia Bennett | Anita Johnson | Cara Johnson | Ellen Ferrier | Jackson Farley | Jacky Cheng | Jacqueline Stojanović | Janette Murrungun | Jennifer Robertson | Joseph E Burgess | Juanella Donovan | Juanita McLauchlan | Lauren Kerjan | Lucia Dohrmann | Margaret Woodward & Justy Phillips | Rebecca Mayo
Touring dates & locations
Tamworth Regional Gallery – 19 September 2026 to 22 November 2026
Glasshouse Port Macquarie – 2 April to 23 May 2027
Craft and Design, Canberra – 29 May to 10 July 2027
Blue Mountains Cultural Centre – 30 July to 19 September 2027
Griffith Regional Art Gallery – 1 October 2027 to 14 November 2027
Fabrik Lobethal SA (Adelaide Hills) – 26 November 2027 to 30 January 2028
Swan Hill Regional Gallery – 19 February 2028 to 30 April 2028
Rosny Farm, Rosny Park – 12 May to 25 June 2028
Burnie Regional Art Gallery – 1 July to 13 August 2028
Wangaratta Art Gallery – 26 August 2028 to 5 November 2028
Museum of Art and Culture, Lake Macquarie –11 November 2028 to 16 February 2029
Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo –3 March 2029 to 20 May 2029
Ćilim with devil’s knees
2026
wool, silk, pomegranates, walnuts and indigo
120 x 93 cm
A ćilim is a flat woven carpet traditionally produced in countries of the former Persian and Ottoman Empires. Jacqueline Stojanović’s Ćilim with devil’s knees has been made in the particular style practiced in the south-eastern Serbian town of Pirot. Admired for their 122 ornaments, they are one of the most important cultural handcrafts of the region. In 2002 the carpets became protected by geographical indication; only to be made in Pirot with the wool of the endangered pramenka sheep which grazes on the nearby mountain. Up until the 1980s, the industry was highly organised, employing around 1,800 weavers during the twentieth century. Following the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s diaspora of the Balkans continues to grow, and today there remain only 6 women in Pirot who weave the protected carpets. Ćilim with devil’s knees considers this act of protection from a diasporic perspective.
Each ornament on a ćilim holds an atropaic significance. Depicted in Stojanović’s ćilim are the protective symbols of turtles, wreaths and devil’s knees. The devil’s knees are woven in the carpet’s inner plate, a powerful symbol that repels harmful thoughts and negative energy, as though the devil can protect one from anything worse than the devil. The ćilim has been hand woven on Wurundjeri Woiwurrung land in Melbourne over a period of four months, and coloured by pomegranates, walnuts and indigo from the artist’s garden.
Ćilim with devil’s knees (work in progress)
2026
wool, silk, pomegranates, walnut, and indigo
120 x 93 cm
2026
wool, silk, pomegranates, walnut, and indigo
120 x 93 cm
Ćilim with devil’s knees
2026
wool, silk, pomegranates, walnut, and indigo
120 x 93 cm
Photo courtesy Haydens
2026
wool, silk, pomegranates, walnut, and indigo
120 x 93 cm
Photo courtesy Haydens
Ćilim with devil’s knees (detail)
2026
wool, silk, pomegranates, walnut, and indigo
120 x 93 cm
Photo courtesy Haydens
2026
wool, silk, pomegranates, walnut, and indigo
120 x 93 cm
Photo courtesy Haydens
Ćilim with devil’s knees
2026
wool, silk, pomegranates, walnut, and indigo
120 x 93 cm
Photo courtesy Haydens
2026
wool, silk, pomegranates, walnut, and indigo
120 x 93 cm
Photo courtesy Haydens