Around the Senior School

Year 11/12 Textiles & Design Excursion

On Friday 28 April, Year 11 and 12 Textiles and Design students made the journey to Sydney to view the Shape and Texstyle exhibitions. These are annual exhibitions of the previous year’s HSC exemplar major projects and folios. We began our day at the Shape exhibition in The Powerhouse Museum. The exhibition included garments ranging from tailored suits to apocalyptic inspired costume, wall hung textiles art and sculptural textile animals. Student folios were accessible through QR code instead of on display, an interesting use of interactive technology. The highlight of the visit was the opportunity to view the Carla Zampatti retrospective exhibition. Every aspect of this sensory immersion was wonderfully curated and I would thoroughly recommend a visit. The music, plinths, seated audio pods and carefully styled mannequins told not just of Carla Zampatti’s clever pattern making and attention to detail but gave an insight to modern Australian social history from the Seventies to present day. We finished our visit with the Gay Pride exhibition featuring larger than life costumes and colours. A perfect juxtaposition to the Zampatti classic subtlety.

In the afternoon we visited Gallery 76, The Embroiderer’s Guild Gallery in Concord. The venue is this year’s display space for Texstyle, an exhibition of approximately 30 exemplar projects and folios from the 2022 HSC featuring the work of our very own Xanthe St Clair. The exhibition and generous volunteers gave students the opportunity to look more closely at the projects and folios, providing valuable insight into expectations and how high quality results can be achieved. In all, a super day, full of inspiration, motivation and information.