With Magdalena Abakanowicz’s giant of an exhibition still at Tate Modern, this small show of women’s fibre art at Richard Saltoun Gallery is a welcome opportunity to see her work within the rich context of eastern European textile art tradition more broadly. While the exhibition focuses on the gallery artists Jagoda Buić and Barbara Levittoux-Świderska, other pioneers of the fibre art movement, such as Abakanowicz and Ewa Pachucka, feature along with new work from Anna Perach and Egle Jauncems, a younger generation who bring a more contemporary contribution. The exhibition takes its title, Antigone, from a work of the same name by Buić who died last year.

Marta Kowalewska, chief curator at the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź, Poland, says: “It is striking that women artists caused the inclusion of modern textiles into the wider field of art. The success of the ‘Polish school of textile art’ at subsequent editions of the Lausanne Biennial demonstrated they had expanded the field of textiles into new territories in an avant garde way as a result of their unique feel for weaving materials.”¹

Levittoux-Świderska had exhibited her work Stone Structure [Struktura Kamienia] (1984) at Lausanne in 1985. More than 15 years earlier, in 1969, Buic, Pachucka and Abakanowicz were among those included in MoMA’s exhibition Wall Hangings, alongside American artists such as Sheila Hicks. It was recognised then that: “During the last 10 years, developments in weaving have caused us to revise our concept of this craft and to view the work within the context of 20th century art.”² Glenn Adamson has written eloquently about the importance of that exhibition including how, in 2020, Richard Saltoun gallery offered its own homage to the Wall Hangings exhibition in its virtual viewing room.³

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