Stormy Weather: Textile Art, Water and Climate Emergency

This paper entwines the voices of art historian Dr. Fionna Barber and Artist Scholar Prof. Jools Gilson to propose the critical importance of textile art in contemporary debates about the climate emergency. Framed in collaborative counterpoint to previous work on femininity and water (notably Neimanis 2012, 2017), this discussion focuses on three textile-based projects through two meteorological exhibitions; Mapping Climate Change: The Knitting Map & The Tempestry Project at the Berman Museum of Art in Pennsylvannia, US and Strange Attractors at Tate St. Ives, UK, both 2021. The paper proposes The Knitting Map as a way of thinking about textiles and climate, as well as an artwork. It visits Cork City, the Irish bog, and Cornwall, traversing tropes of landscape, weather and national identity as it tangles textiles, analysis, and story.