‘The exquisitely curated essays in this book examine The Knitting Map and its trajectory from a brilliant idea to a performative act of generosity, remembrance, joy and ultimately deep significance.’
Michelle Fricke, The Ray Beagle Chair in Art History, Kansas City Art Institute, USA.
Textiles, Community & Controversy: The Knitting Map
Published by Bloomsbury in 2019 and richly illustrated in colour, this collection includes lively chapters by art critics Lucy Lippard, Fionna Barber and Jessica Hemmings which locate The Knitting Map within distinctive histories of feminist art making, Irish art history, and collaborative textile makiing. Order copies here.
Textiles Community and Controversy was published at a unique moment of reclamation and debate about women’s textile art. The Knitting Map was commissioned by the European Capital of Culture: Cork 2005, developed from an idea by Jools Gilson, and directed by Gilson and Richard Povall. This book unravels the contradictory gestures of community and controversy manifest in contemporary textile art practices involving women as artists and makers, using the major Irish textile work, The Knitting Map as resonant case study and site of contested debate. It does so with a lively collection of critical and performative writing and full colour illustration:
New writing by some of the best known contemporary critics on textile art and feminism; Lucy Lippard, Jessica Hemmings & Joanne Turney.
Introduction to The Knitting Map as a key moment in Irish art history, and as a complex, multi-modal textile art work by art historian Fionna Barber.
Read the Review of this book in Textile Cloth and Culturehere.
Jools Gilson & Nicola Moffat Eds. (2019) Textiles Community & Controversy: The Knitting Map, London & New York: Bloomsbury.
