The Tamworth Regional Gallery has been presenting the Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial since the early 1980s. This Biennial has been an on-going contribution to and stimulation of debate about the diverse nature of contemporary fibre textile practice in Australia. Over this time the Biennial has developed from a survey exhibition showing the most innovative fibre textile works from the previous two years to a curated exhibition recognized nationally as Australia's pre-eminent textile related exhibition. The 16th Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial a matter of time was curated by Melbourne based writer and curator Suzie Attiwill. This is the catalogue essay for the exhibition a matter of time.

A matter of time has been the working title for the exhibition since May 2003. When Brian Langer invited me to curate the 16th biennial, the concept of time in relation to textiles and fibres came to mind. From the point of view of now, I can see how certain ideas have emerged to become important in shaping the exhibition. A curator's text would usually address these as points or - to pick up on a textile metaphor - curatorial threads. For many months, this is how I imagined I might organise and arrange the exhibition. At different points, I attempted to draw out threads to do with time from the work I had selected - for example ritual, history, memory, everyday, tradition, technique and so on. Each time, however, these attempts reduced the complexities of the work and this in turn deferred any endeavour to weave them back together as a way of making the exhibition. Instead I have found myself caught up in a process of metamorphosis; as the curator I have become implicated, enveloped and entangled. Like a blanket folded, unfolded, wrapped, de-threaded, re-woven, draped - the form of the exhibition has taken shape through various forces internal and external. It could have been held still so as to conform to a pre-determined curatorial structure but then it would not have been a matter of time so much about time. For myself, and the other participants here, the experience of time is the potency of fibre and textiles - and we invite you to become enveloped in processes of transformations and materialisations.

During this process, I have carried with me a quote from Sue Rowley in her introduction to Reinventing Textiles: 'It is useful to think of craft in terms of multiple temporalities'. I was attracted by the concept of multiple temporalities, what this might mean and how it might be useful. A matter of time is an exploration of this usefulness.

Over the past 19 months, I have met many people who work with fibre and textiles. We have discussed their work and shared ideas. At times, as already mentioned, I tried to locate threads that I could pull out and use to make the exhibition, to weave it together. I would tease out multiple temporalities like carding a staple of wool or attempt to un-ply the multi-ply. This produced many exciting possible lines to follow and draw together but in terms of the exhibition fabric, the curatorial hand was too dominant and dominating. And from the beginning, I had planned the exhibition to collect together what was already happening in contrast to commissioning artists to respond to a curatorial theme. This kind of exhibition is located in the middle, in a swell of activity and forces, where works are not displayed as end products produced specifically for the exhibition, but have had various lives and become animated here again in a different context. Each piece is also an expression of process and thus located in between - recycling, reanimating, picking up and making do, wrapping and enveloping. The materiality of fibre and textiles derails any concept of a blank canvas, instead one is always in the midst of something and engaging with things already in process, making relations that are dynamic and change.

In the selection of work for the exhibition, I was keen to locate work that was not about time but was an experience of time. When pushed to articulate what I meant by this, it was difficult to explicate as it involved a fine balance that shifted the emphasis about idea and material. There has been in Western modernist culture a privileging of representational idea over matter and this has also been manifested in contemporary textile and fibre practice. My focus on time however was not as an abstract system or concept, but how craft practice privileges matter organising it through different techniques and in the process actualising time. The works and exhibition therefore become a matter of time. Hence the title of the exhibition a matter of time and not 'it's about time' as some people had suggested as an alternative. These are two distinct and different relations to time.

This also opens up other possible ways of encountering the work and exhibition - one where material and process becomes content. The work then is not approached so much as something which is re-presenting an idea, as an illustration of an idea, but comes forward, envelopes you, implicates you in the production of its meaning. It is still in process and produced by temporal and spatial relations and forces. People - artists, curator, writer, and audience - become participants in the production of a matter of time.

It is only matter that can differentiate time. Matter makes apparent change and movement - this may be due to forces such as seasons, climates, light, wind, hand and machine techniques and processes. The matter of textiles and fibre is sensitive to these forces. In Western cultures, change is often understood negatively as degradation and decay - hence the attempt by conservators to minimise the effects as much as possible and the museological desire for a state of stasis. The vulnerability of many of these works in a matter of time is part of their materialisation and they continue to be caught in this temporal tension. One becomes aware of the temporal and spatial relations that have been located and worked materially to produce a place - however ephemeral or enduring - in amongst chaos and excess. What we encounter here is an experience and actualisation of time. This brings out a performative quality of both objects and exhibition. Event-objects where objects are part of events and not discrete, self-contained objects. Performances may involve hands, bodies and eyes to implicate, explicate and complicate, and move from one state to another, metamorphosing and transforming, where different spatial and temporal relations producing infinite variations and encounters.

One is caught up in this movement like in a swell. The multiple temporalities which become actual make problematic a privileging of the present where the past and future are located in a linear relation as before and after. Instead, there is an intensive quality to the moment of encounter: past, present and future emerge and merge. Over the past months, a relation to the past became apparent in some form in all the works. It now seems obvious or inevitable that this would happen through the process of materialising temporal relations and an experience of time. The present moment passes and knowledge only comes after. The dates of the work also indicate various temporal conditions to consider. Some are specific to the year they were made, another has the date included in its title but continues to change during the exhibition, another covers a period of six years and one the lifetime of the tour. In this sense, the exhibition as a matter of time continues to transform and change as the works tour.

Temporalities proliferate endlessly. As the curator I have collected and assembled work here for you to encounter - hopefully this will happen in a gallery space so you become implicated in the materiality and movement of the event. I cannot explicate myself from this process to give you a summary as is customary of curatorial essays. But neither do I desire to without also being implicated and complicating. No threads have been pulled and brought into this text, instead you are invited to move along the many lines that accompany the works and compose multiple temporalities. Each work is accompanied by a text provided by the participant and then an 'add on' text by me (in italics) which makes a connection I have with the work and its affect on me. It is hoped that these two voices encourage multiple voices and open up the performative aspect of the work and the exhibition as an ongoing actualisation of time, each time it is encountered. Textiles and fibre are dynamic matter, which connects us with the temporal. They are vulnerable and volatile; animated and affected. A matter of time celebrates this in ways which continue to engage and multiply.

Some multiple temporalities encountered in a matter of time in no particular order:
Ephemeral. Transitory. Transformation. Urgency. Daily. Commemorate. History. Re-imagine. Past. Event. Present. Actual. Colonialism. Change. Movement. Memory. Process. Moment. Metamorphosis. Rhythm. Passing. Stories. Wedding. Hours. Recycle. Intern. Surprise. Portable. Migration. Surprise. Tradition. Digital. Heritage. Flux. Intensive. Forgetting. Modernism. Cycles. Seasons. Technique. Environment. Collecting. Tedious. Meditative. Perform. Actions. Repetition. Outdated. Virtual. Death. Life. Re-valued. Timeline. Make do. Eternity. Stitch. Ritual. Time consuming. Incantation. Repetitive. Duration. Animation. Linear. Continuum. Shadow. Light. Narrative. Storytelling. Doing time. Making. Production. Destruction. Decay. Fermentation. Preservation. Conservation. Born. Reclaiming. Old. Simultaneous. Aged. Prolong. Repair. Revive. Renew. Storage. Unmake. De-thread. Incidental. Collaborate. Reanimation. Instant. Ceremony. Future. Minute. Day. Situation. Remembering. Fashion. Enduring. Stasis. Memorialise. Longevity. New. Emerge.

Suzie Attiwill

Suzie Attiwill is program director, Interior Design, School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University. She also has a practice as an independent curator/exhibition designer and writer.