SUBVERSIVE THREADS, 2025.
Subversive Threads, exhibition views. Outer Space, Brisbane, Australia.
Photographs by Louis Lim.
SUBVERSIVE THREADS
17 October – 22 November 2025
Opening Event | 17 October 6 – 8pm
Conversation & Workshop | Saturday 15 November, 1 – 4pm
Fish Lane Creative Markets | Sunday 23 November, 10 – 2pm
Melt Festival of Queer Arts & Culture| 22 October – 9 November 2025
About the exhibition
Subversive Threads is a new solo exhibition by artist Rae Haynes, presented at Outer Space. Known for a contemporary feminist practice that interrogates gender ethics and the language of abstraction through text-based works, textiles, and installation, Haynes brings together personal history and political inquiry in this exhibition.
The work emerges from Haynes’ research into the legacies of embroidery in feminist art, particularly through the lens of Rozsika Parker’s seminal text The Subversive Stitch (1984). This inquiry led to the discovery of genealogical connections to Mary Linwood (1755–1845), a pioneering British textile artist and educator renowned for her ‘needle painting’ technique and public exhibitions in 19th- century London.
Further archival investigation revealed that in the 1890s, Haynes’ ancestors Claudia and Ada Hull established Linwood College in Bulanaming/Marrickville, named in honour of Mary Linwood. Through feminist, genderqueer, and decolonial methodologies, Haynes explores these familial and creative legacies via archival research, auto-theoretical storytelling, and participatory workshops.
