Textiles. Art and the Social Fabric was a vast group exhibition bringing together artists who make use of textiles or related concepts. The exhibition analysed the reasons why artists choose this approach. Artists often use this medium in order to convey the diverse complex social meanings which it harbours and look into the political aspects as shown in work, culture, identity, dispute and presentation.

The exhibition presented several new commissions, including a tapestry designed by the Polish artist Goshka Macuga and produced by a specialised company in Flanders. The tapestry is a woven interpretation of press photographs taken at the artist’s exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. On this occasion, Macuga had borrowed the version of Picasso’s Guernica which hangs in the United Nations building in New York and installed it in the exhibition area, where it acted as a backdrop for various encounters, conferences or other community events.  The tapestry exhibited here showed Prince William giving an address in front of the previous tapestry, which represents Guernica, and is a critique of the artist’s own work and the failure of her political intentions. Furthermore, the work makes reference to the history of the royal tapestry manufacturers and the royal scenes which they often reproduced.