Fringe Arts Bath - The Stitch That Bit Back

Fringe Arts Bath 2026: When Textiles Refuse to Sit Quietly

Fringe Arts Bath has always been a festival that thrives on disruption - art in unexpected places, ideas that push back, and voices that don’t wait for permission. This year’s programme (22 May - 6 June 2026) brings that spirit into sharp focus, and nowhere is it more evident than in The Stitch That Bit Back, a textile exhibition that challenges everything we think we know about fibre, softness, and the politics of making.

A Festival Built on Experimentation

FaB is known for transforming Bath into a city-wide laboratory for contemporary art - pop-up exhibitions, interventions, and artist-led projects unfolding across empty shops, studios, and public spaces. It’s a free festival designed for wandering, discovering, and stumbling across work that might shift your thinking.

Within this wider programme, The Stitch That Bit Back stands out as a fierce, ambitious curatorial statement.

The Exhibition: The Stitch That Bit Back

Curated by Chloë Savage and Katarína Orolínová, the exhibition brings together international artists working across embroidery, weaving, lace, sculptural fibre, and experimental textile processes. What unites them is not a single theme, but a shared refusal to let textiles behave.

The curators frame fibre as a site of:

·      Tension and rebellion

·      Emotional labour and repair

·      Subversion of traditional technique

·      The uncanny, absurd, or surreal

This is textile art that interrupts rather than embellishes; quilts that question rather than comfort; lace that lacerates.

Highlights From the Exhibition

The works on display range from the ornate to the unsettling, from heritage craft to radical experimentation:

·      David Morrish (Kingfly) - machine-embroidered skulls set in gilded baroque frames, merging digital stitch with devotional aesthetics.

·      Tanya Bentham - medieval opus anglicanum reimagined with contemporary narratives that reveal themselves only on close inspection.

·      Beáta Gerbócová - layered jacquard-woven portraits that read like textile architecture, shifting between face, structure, and abstraction.

Across the exhibition, artists twist, fray, pull, and reimagine what textile practice can be - from refined craftsmanship to deliberately raw gesture.

Why This Exhibition Matters

Textiles have long been dismissed as domestic, decorative, or safely feminine. The Stitch That Bit Back confronts that history head-on. It insists that fibre can be confrontational, political, and conceptually rigorous - that softness can carry strength, and that every thread can hold intent. It also proves that there is a desperate need in the UK for an open textile exhibition.

In the context of a festival that champions emerging voices and experimental practice, the exhibition becomes a powerful reminder:
textile art is not a quiet medium - it’s a language of resistance.

Visiting the Exhibition

·      Venue: Newark Works, Bath

·      Open: 23 May - 6 June, 11am-6pm daily 2

Whether you’re a maker, a curator, or simply someone who loves art that pushes back, this exhibition is one of the most compelling stops in the Fringe Arts Bath 2026 programme.

Congratulations to every single artist that has taken part, and Thank you to Chloe and Katarina for inviting me to take part.