Textile artist challenges what our collections say about us
Published on 23 July 2025
Newcastle-based textile artist Gillian Bencke’s exhibition of new textile sculptures at Wangaratta Art Gallery explores the stories we create around objects and how they define us as people and societies.
Opening on Saturday 26 July, Bencke’s exhibition Us uses the language of museum display to pose questions about how the objects and adornments we collect speak of who we are today and what they will say about us in the future.
Relics and objects of the past have been a long-standing interest for Bencke. Visitors to the gallery will be familiar with her earlier artwork, Cope, which won the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award in 2021 and is now held in the art gallery’s collection. Cope was created from three black dresses, restructured into a cope – a liturgical garment traditionally illustrated with stories of Christ. Responding to the shifts felt during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bencke stitched her own story, with enduring symbols of power - money, drugs and weapons - alongside stitched drawings of belongings no longer in use - the inevitable waste of modern life.
Bencke’s work has also been selected several times for Wangaratta Art Gallery’s biennial Petite Miniature Textiles exhibition, most recently in 2024. Her work has been exhibited across Australia including most recently at Maitland Regional Art Gallery and work selected for the Gosford Art Prize, the Tamworth Textile Triennial and the Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award.
Gallery Director, Rachel Arndt says that:
“Bencke’s serious and subtly subversive textile work return to the Gallery in this thought-provoking exhibition. We are delighted to present an exhibition by an artist that is not only technically masterful but also addresses one of the key issues of our time – what makes us us.”
In speaking about her work, the artist notes that old urns held stories of mythology as well as everyday life in classical Greek and Roman times, and Western Society still clings to this tradition today. Museums elevate such vessels as highly prized evidence of culture and art, yet Bencke challenges these assumptions:
“My vessels deliberately mimic these artefacts, but are constructed of materials including felt, linen and velvets that will not have the same longevity as a ceramic urn. The intention is to open up new mythologies formed by present day politics, contemporary culture and ethics of collecting in the context of the Anthropocene.”
Bencke’s work often utilises symbolism within her elaborate and thoughtful stitching designs upon textile objects. In this new body of work, the artist instead uses familiar symbolic objects, such as urns, vases, necklaces and even charm bracelets, all created from textiles. The exhibition will question how commonly collected items are thought about and displayed, at home, in public spaces such as museums and even on our own bodies. The artist has considered how we display commonly collected items - ephemera, keepsakes, and heirlooms from personal collections and institutional collections and is interested in how communities collect, preserve and exhibit these artefacts. The exhibition allows the visitor to ask how, as a society, we define and reinforce culture and assign value and meaning to material objects.
The exhibition will run from 26 July - 14 September 2025 in Gallery 2.
The artist will be hosting a workshop for participants to create their own oversized jewellery on Saturday 23 August followed by the opening celebration for the exhibition at 4pm. More details to come. Please visit www.wangarattaartgallery.com.au for further information.