Fashionistas are expected to flock to Western Plains Cultural Centre (WPCC) in Dubbo for an exhibition that will be equally appealing to admirers of wool-inspired art.
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“Significant” artworks from the New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM) collection have been paired with avant-garde garments from The Woolmark Company’s International Woolmark Prize archive.
Together, they have created a striking exhibition called The Art of Wool.
The spectacular combinations have WPCC curator Kent Buchanan predicting that the travelling exhibition will be “hugely popular”.
At the same time he is saluting a fellow curator.
“Basically The Woolmark Company curator went into the NERAM collection, looked at the artworks and drew out those that could respond to the garments,” Mr Buchanan said.
The WPCC curator points out how the likes of “folds, colour and texture” in the clothes generate a warm relationship with the artworks.
“I think the exhibition will draw large crowds,” he said.
“There are a lot of people who are aware of the rich collection of NERAM.
“They’ll be coming to look at some of the really beautiful paintings in the show, and then there will be people who will be really drawn to the garments.”
Mannequins, some headless and without arms, announce to the public that The Art of Wool has arrived in the main gallery space at WPCC.
The exhibition will be complemented by a educational display in WPCC museum space.
Grown, Shorn, Spun aims to explore “aspects of the local wool industry” and give visitors insight into the way it is produced in the region.
The Art of Wool exhibition is presented by NERAM and Australian Wool Innovation with assistance from the federal government through the Ministry of the Arts Visions of Australia program.
It will be opened at WPCC at 2pm on Saturday and will run until April 30. Representatives of Australian Wool Innovation will be at the opening to “chart the past, present and future of wool” as an Australian icon and globalised commodity.