Beyond the Loom: What Fibre Can Do at PAD London 2026

 

Maison Parisienne at PAD London 2026

Walk through PAD London 2026 and it becomes clear that fibre has outgrown the loom. Here it hangs in space, rises from the wall in relief or is shaped into the figure of a horse.

Peter Collingwood’s Macrogauze

Peter Collingwood’s Macrogauze technique, developed in the 1960s, offers an early example of textile as structure. By manipulating warp threads, he created open, three-dimensional forms in which the gaps matter as much as the thread. At Zigzag Modern, two of his wall hangings make the point: a tall, narrow column of repeated forms beside a smaller, compact grid. Against a dark wall, their shadows carry the pattern beyond the weave.

Ptolemy Mann’s Yellow Violet Dynamics, at Tristan Hoare Gallery, draws attention back to the surface. Hand-dyed colour and weave merge in a composition closer to abstract painting than conventional textile pattern.

Landscape shapes the work of Mallorcan artist Adriana Meunié. Her A Wall of Wildness tapestries, shown by Sarah Myerscough Gallery, combine carritx, esparto, sisal, linen, estopa and antique esparto rope. Several of these fibres have long histories in Balearic basketry and agriculture. Sourced from her immediate surroundings, they retain a physical connection to the island. The works do not depict the Mediterranean so much as bring its textures and materials into the room.

Simone Post

At Rademakers Gallery, Overgrown takes its cue from the trees of Berkeley Square. Founder Pien Rademakers conceived the presentation after seeing them the previous year, imagining nature gradually reclaiming an interior.

 Textile is central to this idea. Simone Post explores pattern and reuse through her work with Vlisco, the Dutch textile manufacturer, whose leftover and misprinted fabrics have featured in her carpet designs. At PAD, her vividly coloured works reward a closer look: what initially resembles painted colour reveals the patterns and textures of cloth.

Alfhild Sarah Külper, formerly head of design at Viktor & Rolf, works with leftover wool sourced from India, Nepal and the Netherlands. Her Night Garden is more tactile, using tufting and three-dimensional embroidery to build a raised relief in which the fibres lift from the surface.

Alfhild Sarah Külper

Héléna Guy L’Homme 

At Maison Parisienne, fibre becomes sculpture. Simone Pheulpin pleats raw cotton by hand, folding and securing it until the surface resembles tree bark or rock strata. The material’s softness gives way to a dense, almost mineral appearance. Héléna Guy L’Homme takes a figurative approach, modelling carded wool into a sculpture inspired by the horse of Selene from the Parthenon.

Across these works, fibre is not simply a surface to be patterned or a material to be woven. It can open up space, hold the traces of previous use, evoke a landscape or build a sculptural form. At PAD, the material itself becomes part of the subject.

Ptolemy Mann