Kate Just, Anonymous was a woman (detail), 2019-2021. 140 hand knitted panels with wool, acrylic yarns and timber, 40 x 40cm each. Photograph: Brenton McGeachie. Courtesy: the artist and Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, Goulburn, NSW.

Soft Power explores the diverse ways Australian artists use textiles to investigate social, cultural and political issues of our time. The exhibition presents the works of six Australian artists who each embrace textiles in order to send a message. These works explore a range of themes including environmentalism, feminism and power.

This exhibition celebrates textiles as a powerful medium which holds memory, with many artists incorporating materials that have close connections to their lived experience. These works have an embedded intimacy, embodied with time, care, skill and labour and constructed from elements collected, recycled, worn and transformed. Embracing a variety of techniques including knitting, assemblage and embroidery, Soft Power features works enmeshed with history and meaning.

Exhibited artists include: Karla Dickens, Julia Gutman, Nadia Hernández, Mehwish Iqbal, Kate Just and Raquel Ormella.