Tender Dialogues – upcoming exhibition for Melbourne Design Week
Apr 07, 2026
Tender Dialogues brings together new works by Melbourne-based textile artists Claudia Bloxsome and Georgia Boseley, presented by Amy Voterakis in collaboration with HALI Rugs for Melbourne Design Week.
Staged within the HALI showroom from Wednesday 13 May to Tuesday 26 May, the exhibition considers textile as a form that is at once tactile, spatial and emotionally resonant. Bringing together two distinct yet complementary practices, Tender Dialogues explores the expressive possibilities of fibre.
Historically positioned as domestic or decorative, weaving and fibre-based practices have often been overlooked in relation to other art forms. This exhibition offers another perspective. Through works that are immersive, materially rich and commanding, Tender Dialogues presents textile as expansive, deliberate and contemporary.
Claudia Bloxsome’s diaphanous, loom-woven panels inhabit the HALI windows with a shifting presence, filtering light and drawing the street into dialogue with the interior. Within the showroom, Georgia Boseley’s pandanus and ceramic forms bring weight, tension and a strong physical presence to the space. Together, the works invite a slower kind of looking — one attentive to gesture, rhythm, material and atmosphere.
Presented within a rug showroom rather than a conventional gallery setting, Tender Dialogues reflects an interest in how design spaces can also operate as places of cultural exchange. Here, textile is not treated as backdrop or embellishment, but as a carrier of knowledge, labour and form — something both functional and poetic, grounded in process yet open for meaning.
In the context of Melbourne Design Week, the exhibition speaks to a broader conversation around material thinking and the value of practices that sit across art, craft and design. By bringing these works into HALI, Tender Dialogues proposes a meeting point between exhibition-making and everyday space, and between contemporary fibre practice and the wider design world.
Exhibition Dates: Wednesday 13 May – Tuesday 26 May
Opening Reception: Saturday 16 May, 2–4pm
