Textile Art in Australia: What's On, Prizes to Enter and How to Sell It

Textile art is having a very good spring in Australia. In Tamworth, a town most of us link with a giant golden guitar and a lot of country music, the regional gallery has just opened Nature Machine, the 6th Tamworth Textile Triennial. It runs until 22 November. And on a much smaller scale, a maker called Lee has put her handmade fabric bags on ArtFlow under the name Fabric Creations by Lee. Two very different bits of news. Same material.

So it seemed like the right week to pull a few things together on Australian textile art: what's worth going to see, which prizes are worth a look, and what you need to sort out if you make this kind of work and want to sell it.

Key takeaways

• Nature Machine, the 6th Tamworth Textile Triennial, is on at Tamworth Regional Gallery from 19 September to 22 November 2026.

• The Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award pays its winner A$40,000 and comes around every two years.

• Ararat Gallery TAMA in western Victoria is a public gallery given over to textile and fibre work.

• Selling scarves, cushions or quilts? Australia's care labelling standard applies. Bags and handbags are exempt.

• Sunlight, damp and insects are what ruin textile art at home, and all three are manageable.

What counts as textile art?

Anything where fibre or fabric is the main material and the maker is after more than a useful object. That takes in weaving and tapestry, quilting, embroidery, felting, knitting and crochet, basketry, hand-dyed and printed cloth, soft sculpture and wearable pieces. You'll hear "fibre art" used for much the same territory, and nobody polices the border. Our rundown of the types of artwork Australian artists work in has textiles sitting alongside ceramics, glass and the rest.

Is it art or is it craft? People still ask. We'd point them at the prize money further down this page, and at the public galleries that have been collecting this work since the 1970s. A handmade bag can be something you carry your keys in and also a piece somebody designed, cut and stitched with real intent. Both things are true at once.

What's on now: Nature Machine in Tamworth

Tamworth Regional Gallery has been collecting fibre and textile work since 1973, which goes some way to explaining why a national textile show lives in regional New South Wales and not in Sydney or Melbourne. The triennial opens in Tamworth every three years and then goes on the road.

This one is curated by Blake Griffiths, and it's about the hand, the body and the machine. The gallery describes it as a look at how artists make work in ways that sustain the materials and ecologies they depend on, with practices running from permaculture right through to artificial intelligence. Which is a long way from doilies.

Can't get to Tamworth before the end of November? Don't write it off. The last triennial, Residue + Response, toured for two years after it opened and turned up in Broken Hill, Mildura, Wagga Wagga, Manly, Port Macquarie, Grafton and Ipswich, among other places. Nature Machine has federal touring money behind it too, and it's due to head out to ten venues across five states and territories from 2027. Keep an eye on your nearest regional gallery's program.

Where to see textile art the rest of the year

A couple of hours west of Melbourne on the Western Highway, in the old town hall on Vincent Street, is Ararat Gallery TAMA. The letters stand for Textile Art Museum Australia. It's been focused on textile and fibre work since the 1970s (the district's long history with fine merino wool had something to do with that); the collection runs from that decade to now, and a 2018 expansion doubled its exhibition and collection space. If you only make one road trip for fabric, that's the one we'd pick.

Wangaratta Art Gallery, up in north-east Victoria, is the other name to know. It's home to the country's biggest textile prize, which brings us to money.

Textile art prizes worth knowing about

The big one is the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award. The gallery calls it the richest textile prize in Australia: A$40,000 for the winner, plus an A$2,500 highly commended award named for Ruth Amery. It's been running every two years since 2009. In 2025, ten finalists were picked from more than 430 entries, and Jemima Wyman took first prize. Every two years means the next round should land in 2027, so anyone with a strong piece half-finished on the loom has time.

One word in the fine print trips people up. The Wangaratta prize is acquisitive, which means the gallery keeps the winning work for its collection. Lovely for your CV. Just know it before you enter something you can't bear to part with.

Smaller, and a bit less daunting, is the Australian Fibre Art Award, run every two years by ArtWear Publications. First prize is A$2,000, and you need to live in Australia. In the 2025 round, artists could enter up to four works, none bigger than 150 by 150 cm, and every piece had to be for sale. Rules shift from round to round, so read the current entry form and not last time's.

If you do get selected, the unglamorous part starts: packing, labels, delivery dates. Our post on preparing work for an exhibition was written about ceramics, but the planning is the same whatever you make.

Selling textile art: the hours problem.

Every quilter and weaver already knows this bit. The materials might cost A$60. The hours are another story. A hand-stitched piece can swallow a fortnight of evenings, and then someone at a market holds it up and says they saw something similar at Kmart for twenty bucks.

You can't win that argument at the stall, and you don't need to. What you need is a price you've worked out properly and can say without flinching. Count your hours, pay yourself for them, add materials and a share of your running costs, and keep the same price whether it's sold at a market, online, or through a gallery. We've been through the sums, including gallery commission and GST, in our guide on how to price your artwork, so we won't repeat them here.

Do you need a care label?

This one catches makers out. Australia has a mandatory care labelling standard for clothing and textiles, and it doesn't only apply to big brands. It covers clothing, household textiles, furnishings, bedding, piece goods and yarns, among other things. So a hand-dyed scarf, a cushion cover or a quilt sold as bedding needs care instructions, either in English or using the standard care symbols.

Bags are different. The standard specifically exempts all bags and cases, including handbags, purses and wallets, and second-hand goods are exempt as well. A wall hanging made purely as an artwork is greyer, so read the standard yourself or ask before you assume. This is general information, not legal advice.

Tip: Put a small care card in with every piece, whether the law asks for it or not. Fibre content, how to clean it, and "keep out of direct sun" takes thirty seconds to write and saves you an awkward email in two years when something has faded.

Looking after textile pieces at home

Fabric is tougher than people think and more fragile than they treat it. The Australian War Memorial looks after a large collection of uniforms, flags and banners, and its conservation advice for textiles is the most practical we've found. The short of it:

• Keep pieces out of sunlight. Fading from UV can't be undone, and UV-filtering Perspex helps if you're framing.

• Store somewhere dry with a bit of air moving, because still, damp air grows mould. Anyone in Brisbane or Cairns knows this already.

• Lay things flat where you can, with acid-free tissue in any folds, and never stack heavy items on top.

• Sturdy pieces can be vacuumed on the lowest suction with a soft brush. Fragile ones should go to a textile conservator.

• If moths or carpet beetles get in, freezing is the Memorial's method: minus 20 degrees for at least 72 hours, then again a week later. Don't freeze brittle silk or painted fabric.

Keeping track of soft work

Textile art is awkward to record. It doesn't have a fixed shape; it's hard to photograph, and "blue bag, medium" won't help you much in a year. For each piece, it's worth noting:

• Fibre content and where the fabric came from

• Technique, such as hand-quilted, machine-pieced, wet-felted, or woven

• Size laid flat and size hanging, if that's different.

• How it hangs or fastens, and any hardware that goes with it

• Care instructions, so they're ready for the label and the listing

That's a lot to hold in your head across fifty pieces. A spreadsheet will carry it for a while, and we've written about what an art inventory spreadsheet should track and when it starts to creak.

New on ArtFlow: Fabric Creations by Lee

Which brings us back to Lee. Her handmade bags and fabric pieces are now catalogued on ArtFlow. She uploaded the work, used the AI tools to get a first draft of each description, and came out the other side with a portfolio that works on her phone and plugs into WordPress. In practice, that means she can show a gallery owner her full range in a meeting, or pull up a particular bag for a customer who's asking about colours, without digging through her camera roll.

It's a small thing, and it's also the difference between "I make bags" and "here, have a look". Welcome, Lee. If you'd like to see how the cataloguing and portfolio tools fit together, they're all on the features page.

Questions people ask about textile art

1. Is textile art considered fine art? Yes. Public galleries collect it, national exhibitions tour it, and the top Australian prize for it is worth A$40,000. The old art-versus-craft line gets blurrier every year.

2. What's the biggest textile art prize in Australia? The Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award. The winner receives A$40,000, and the work goes into Wangaratta Art Gallery's collection. It's held every two years.

3. Where can I see textile art in Australia? Ararat Gallery TAMA in Victoria specialises in it all year. Tamworth Regional Gallery hosts the Tamworth Textile Triennial, which then tours regional galleries around the country.

4. Do handmade textile pieces need care labels in Australia? Clothing, household textiles, bedding and similar goods do, under the national care labelling standard. Bags, handbags and purses are exempt. Check the standard for your own products.

5. How do I stop a textile piece fading? Keep it away from windows and direct sun, and use UV-filtering glazing if it's framed. Light damage is permanent, so prevention is the only fix.

The short version

Australian textile art has a national triennial on right now in Tamworth, an A$40,000 prize due back in 2027, and a dedicated museum in Ararat. If you make it, price your hours properly, label what the law says to label, and keep proper records of every piece. And if you'd like those records to turn into a portfolio you can show from your phone, the way Lee's has, start a free ArtFlow account and load your first few pieces this week.