Australian artist Maggie Baxter travelled throughout India connecting with fine Indian textile makers for 25 years and her exhibition in Perth will highlight the supreme craftsmanship by Indian artists and designers, including Aneeth Arora. By Rupinder Kaur
The finesse and the exquisiteness of the traditional, yet ever-evolving, Indian textiles can be appreciated and discovered when one would traverse through various regions meeting the local textile craftsmen and also the fashion designers. This is what Australian artist Maggie Baxter did for the past 25 years.
Through her exhibition Unfolding: New Indian Textiles, which will be held at Freemantle Arts Centre in Perth on August 1, one would get a glimpse into the traditional skills, motifs and production methods, developed over centuries.
Three Indian artists - fashion designer Aneeth Arora, textile designer Bappaditya Biswas, and artist Mithu Sen - will be travelling this week to be a part of the exhibit.
Designer Aneeth Arora, of brand Pero, spoke on her involvement with the project.
“It wasn’t really a project we worked on. It was during Maggie’s visit to India that she saw my work. She has covered designers from India who have been working with textiles and I happen to be one of them. She then started visiting my studio and since we have an archive, she got to see an array of traditional textiles. It was only after two-three meetings that I realised what her work was about,” shared Arora, a fashion graduate from NIFT.
“She chose what she wanted to showcase in her book Unfolding: Contemporary Indian Textiles as well as at the exhibition. Whatever has been photographed reflects the different mix of textiles from all over the country. There are Ikat from Andhra Pradesh, wool from Himachal Pradesh, there is a textile from Maharashtra,” she further added.
Arora’s brand Pero, which means ‘to wear’ in Marwari, continues to work with the same craftsmen though new techniques might be required to create something new.
“What we do is we continue to work with the same people but we develop different textiles because I don’t want them to feel that they are associated with the label and that everything has a shelf life of only six months and then the fashion changes. For them, it is a way of earning their living so I have been associated with them and whatever technique Maggie has showcased in her book and the exhibition will still continue to be a part of my collection in a different way. There will be relevance season after season, it’s not that the garment in the book will not be in trend anymore,” she told us.
It was only after Arora showcased her design collection during her final year at NIFT that stepped out on a textile hunt and realised she needed to learn more.
“At NIFT we had only one course on traditional textiles which I didn’t feel was enough for me to go out looking for textiles because I didn’t have enough knowledge. I then did my post-graduation in textiles from National Institute of Design and was exposed to textiles first hand. I went and spent time with the craftspeople and understood why a craft is a craft - that why does it become a certain way when it’s done in a certain region of India. During those travels I felt that if I were to start a fashion label, I would incorporate textiles even from the yarn stage. It’s about mixing the yarn. If I mix silk with wool, I might get very soft wool. It was like weaving your own canvas and painting on it. From there the journey started and we don’t buy ready textiles from the market, we built our own textile store with a lot of resources and I pick up textile from there and mix and match to make a collection,” an ecstatic Arora informed.
She shares that Pero is evolving, “It’s just a five-year-old label and when you start you have your constraints from within but the more you go into the market, the more you see appreciation and people encouraging what you’re doing and you get more courage to experiment. You also have a small set-up when you begin but gradually when you expand there are more techniques you can work with and more people start getting in touch with you and offer their techniques. We are growing and there will be a lot more to come”.
With time, she says that she doesn’t want to restrict herself to traditional textiles only of India, “it’s all about hand-made textiles, it could be anywhere in the world”.
The designer, who opened the Wills lifestyle Indian Fashion Week Spring Summer 2015 in March, is “very excited because it’s the first trip to Australia”.
“This will be the first time that I will be talking to some students in Curtin University there. During the exhibition, I’ll be briefing people about the techniques that I’ve used and also there is a forum about handloom textiles of India in the contemporary context of Indian fashion. I’m looking forward to be a part of it and looking forward to listen more. It is also a very big opportunity as I am not going there to represent my brand, it’s almost about taking India there and showing them our techniques,” she signs-off.