Textile artist Gretta Louw has lived all over the world and is now based in Germany. She digitally prints onto fabric and uses various forms of embroidery. She’s interested in the “feminist crafting legacy with technology and the obscured feminist histories of digitalisation” and aims for her “pieces [to] sit across painting, digital art, and textile art.”

Firstly where are you from and where are you based now?

I was born in South Africa and grew up in Perth, Western Australia but moved around a lot after finishing university. I’ve been living in Germany for the last 14 years, first in Berlin and now I’m based in Munich. I still try to spend as much time in Australia as possible.

What is your background in textile art?

My path has not been typical for a textile artist by any means. I have an honours degree in clinical psychology, and the first years of my artistic practice were focused on the ways in which technological advancement in the 21st century was impacting individual psychological functioning, and affecting socio-cultural change. In more recent years I’ve shifted slightly to a broader perspective on networks: digital and technological, yes, but also social and ecological; I’m interested in the network as a philosophical tool to think with. 

As for craft techniques, I really learned them from the women in my family, both consciously and unconsciously. It was just always something that was around me and that I knew how to do. A few years ago I became very interested in connecting this inherently feminist crafting legacy with technology and the obscured feminist histories of digitalisation.

How do you describe your textile art and what techniques do you use?

Mostly I’m working with different combinations of embroidery and digital printing on fabric. I have an iterative digital process, using various algorithmic tools to develop a motif that is printed onto linen or cotton, and then I sketch and embroider (by hand, free-hand machine, or digital machine) over the top. I think these pieces really sit across painting, digital art, and textile art.

What is it about textiles that appeals to you?

It’s such a delicious antidote to the accelerationism of the 21st century. I love watching a piece evolve under my fingers, I love the materiality of it – especially after so many years working predominantly digitally. There’s something that’s incredibly inviting and universal about textiles that seems to really cause viewers to slow down and look. It’s as though in investing in this labour- and time-intensive means of production, it necessitates a slower consumption of the work too.

How do you create a piece?

I do most of my sketching on the computer using Photoshop and a Wacom tablet. I also have on my computer folders and folders of categorised source material I’ve found online. I tend to sample from this database as well as my own past digital work, sort of like developing my own visual language.

It’s a hard question but roughly how long does a piece of work take?

I work full time and the large pieces tend to take around 3-4 months each, sometimes more. I usually have at least one smaller project going on concurrently that I can switch to when I need a break from the large ones or a shift in perspective.

I notice you do a lot of different forms of art, how does your textiles fit in with this?

Textiles are rapidly becoming central to my practice but I do still want to keep making the digital animations and video works, amongst other things. I am interested in digitalisation as one of the most powerful forces shaping 21st century experience (touching everything from interpersonal relationships to climate change) but I appreciate the way that working with textiles facilitates a haptic exploration of these themes, one that I think connects with people on an emotional and sensorial level, not purely an intellectual one. Ultimately, though, I’m open to working with any medium that feels appropriate for whatever it is that I’m trying to say. I was recently commissioned to do a temporary public artwork in Munich and I created a custom campaign for commercial billboards and online marketing platforms – it’s about finding the right way to say what it is that you want to say.

Do you have any advice for aspiring artists?

Keep experimenting until you find what makes your point of view distinct.

What is your career highlight to date?

Always the next project. I did really enjoy curating the exhibition ICONICITY at the Zuccaire Gallery in Stony Brook, New York in 2019 though. It was the first time I showed the embroidered textile banners and as such marked a real turning point in my practice.

What’s next?

I’m working on a solo show for a Berlin-based gallery this summer, pandemic allowing. It’ll be exciting to finally show some of the pieces I’ve been working on during lockdown.

https://grettalouw.com

https://www.instagram.com/grettalouw/