Image: C. Collet

Opening in Tokyo on the 13th October 2009 Warp Factor ‘09 celebrated the innovation and future thinking of textiles researchers and designers from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. Presenting textiles of tomorrow the exhibition and accompanying catalogue explored potential solutions to aspects of some of the key agendas facing us all, such as Health and Wellbeing; Sustainability; Conservation and Visualisation and the re-wiring and re-branding of craft traditions.

Anne Smith, Exhibition Director, Dean of School of Fashion and Textiles, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London

"The future of the global textiles industry, so often the neglected ‘Cinderella’ underpinning fashion and interiors, depends on education, industry and governments supporting collaboration between designers, researchers, technologists and manufacturers. Embodying the Central Saint Martins tradition of risk taking and challenging existing practice and thinking, all the pieces in the exhibition propose new territories, crossing boundaries between craft and technology, design and science, reality and the virtual, East and West. Recently created textiles research pieces appear alongside new works which respond to traditional Japanese cultural references and centuries old craft traditions and processes, through a fresh contemporary vision... Our vision of Textile Futures."

West meets East

The Warp Factor ‘09 Exhibition was held over 7 days at the Toyko Design Centre, moving on to the Art Gallery of University Town, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in Guangzhou, opening in China on 29th October 2009, and returning to London opening at the Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins, in November.

Kate Goldsworthy

Exhibitions > 2009-10 Warp Factor 09: Textile Futures at CSM