The Soft Ontology of Things

The works gathered in ‘The Soft Ontology of Things’ emerge from a shared inquiry into fibre as form, fibre as thought, fibre as living presence. Developed within the Take Two programme, this exhibition marks not only the culmination of a course but the unfolding of many distinct artistic voices shaped through process, experimentation, and care.

Textile practice has always been more than technique. At its base lies community, circles of making, of teaching and learning, of intergenerational transmission of knowledge. Skills pass from hand to hand, but so too do stories, gestures, sensibilities, and ways of seeing. In this lineage, fibre becomes a carrier of memory and relationships. Each stitch, each binding, each soft construction holds echoes of those who have worked before and those who will continue the thread. Within this course, that sense of shared practice has been palpable: a collective studio space formed across distance, sustained by generosity, curiosity, and deep engagement.

As a sculptural and dimensional medium, textile allows for a profound visualisation of ideas. It gives volume to concepts and texture to questions. Cloth and fibre, when activated in space, become embodiments of interconnectivity, between materials and artists, between touch and thought, between human and environment. In these works, matter is not passive. It responds, resists, yields, remembers. Softness becomes a method of inquiry.

Sharing and developing this course alongside the Take Two team has been a transformative experience. The dialogue with students – so engaged, so attentive, so willing to push beyond familiarity – has expanded my own vision. Knowledge does not move in one direction; it circulates. Each student has translated shared foundations into a unique material language through their experiments, risks, and reflections. I remain in awe of what has been produced, not only in terms of technical development, though the growth in skill is evident, but in the depth of thought made visible.

The works presented here respond to the exhibition theme with sensitivity and courage. They question what matter can be. They treat cloth not as surface, but as skin, body, landscape, memory, and speculative future. They explore softness as presence: through tactile textures, gentle volumes, layered surfaces, pliant and shifting forms. They consider breath, fragility, resilience, inheritance, and transformation. ‘The Soft Ontology of Things’ invites us to slow down and to sense the subtle life inherent in material. These sculptures ask us to consider the relations between human and non-human worlds, between craft and care, between intimacy and ecology. They remind us that fibre is a language, one that speaks quietly yet insistently about connection.

To witness these works is to witness matter in the process of becoming. In a Deleuzian spirit, this exhibition embraces becoming, connectivity, and immanent relation, seeing matter and practice not as discrete objects, but as rhizomatic formations of life, idea, and touch."

– Tina Marais

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