WORLD OF THREADS FESTIVAL - OAKVILLE - Due APRIL 30 2018
Festival Dates: October 13, 2018 – November 25, 2018
Opening Reception: October 20, 2018
Artists from around the world are invited to submit bodies of work, installations or individual pieces to the festival. The curators will draw from the pool of submissions to create different thematic group exhibitions. We also mount dozens of solo shows.
Something that’s different about World of Threads Festival is that we let the art guide us. We don’t have predetermined curatorial ideas or impose our concepts on the artists. Each festival is a blank slate. Shows develop entirely out of the submissions received. Your work might inspire an entire exhibition! For Festivals 2016, 2014 and 2012 we curated using this process and it worked very successfully. Don’t assume what kind of exhibitions we will mount based on our past shows. Remember that they’re based on what the artists submit. So Festival 2018 could look very different. We’re also open to work that is not made of fibre materials but instead uses techniques of fibre like sewing and weaving or evokes fibre processes or aesthetics.
Festival 2018 will be focused around Queen Elisabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. In addition to the beautiful gallery, we will also be using the Display Area Gallery, the Corridor Galleries, lobby and open public spaces of the entire facility.
Your work may be for sale and we will try to sell it. There will be a 40% commission on any sales.
Fibre Artist Interviews: Some artists who are accepted will be invited to participate in our interview series.
Three Options for Submitting
Body of Work – Maximum 10 pieces + details.
Individual Pieces – Maximum 10 pieces + details.
Installations – Maximum 10 images + details and renderings.
Festival Background
The World of Threads Festival is a leading international showcase of contemporary fibre and textile art. We are a not-for-profit initiative with charitable status run by a couple of dedicated volunteers. The Festival is ambitious and constantly expanding into new territory. We believe that some of the most exciting and compelling artwork being made today is happening in the field of fibre arts. Through our initiatives we have discovered some remarkable artists and brought them to the attention of Canadian and international audiences.
We began in Oakville, Ontario in 1994 as a single exhibition, expanding to a full festival in 1998 and becoming international in 2009. Festival 2016 had 315 artworks by 134 artists from 23 countries. The festival draws visitors from across the region and internationally and has featured work submitted by hundreds of artists from around the world. Festival 2016 attracted more than 60,000 visitors. In 2015 Dawne Rudman and Gareth Bate won the Oakville Arts Council 2015 Community Impact Arts Award, for bringing global attention to Oakville and elevating the fibre/textile art form around the world.
Our website has become a central hub for lovers of fibre art with our Fibre Artist Interviews series. We currently have a following in 95 countries. To date we have conducted over 135 interviews with Canadian and international artists. We encourage you to spend some time on our website to see what we have done in the past. For some examples of previous artists and exhibitions look under Artwork or check out our Artist Interviews and Curator Interviews.We are working on getting the albums up from the last festival.