BACKGROUND

The exchange and meeting of art and ideas across people, land and countries is as old as humankind. The creation of textiles is an example of an art that shares the same basic principles globally, but has many local variations across the world. Inspired by the national differences as well as similarities between the contemporary textile art of Japan and the United Kingdom, in 2002 curator Lesley Millar initiated a three year research project – Through the Surface - that took the form of a mentoring exchange between emerging and established practitioners from Japan and the UK. Early career textile artists from one country spent time working with established textile artists from the other country. The work created as a result of the experience was exhibited as a large scale exhibition, attracting 96,000 visitors, which toured the UK before being shown at the Museum of Modern Art Kyoto Japan.

CULTEX is a Norwegian-Japanese project that takes as its starting point the concept of the successful working relationships of Through the Surface, again with Lesley Millar as the curator.