With visionary foresight, the founding team behind Ararat Gallery in the late 1960s and early 1970s established textiles as a defining focus of the Gallery’s collection. Taking inspiration from Ararat’s historical association with fine merino wool production, the Gallery has remained committed to exhibiting and collecting textile and fibre art. Fifty years on, the enduring influence of the craft revival movement continues to affirm the cultural relevance and renewed appeal of textiles.

Long recognised as a radical and subversive medium, textiles continue to command critical attention. Ararat Gallery TAMA occupies a distinctive and timely position in today’s cultural landscape through its sustained commitment to textile-based collections and exhibitions. Ararat Gallery TAMA is proud custodian of over a thousand artworks and objects, including quilts, tapestries, basketry, embroideries, sculpture and weavings.

Ararat Gallery was established in 1968 as a few small rooms in the Old Municipal Offices of the Ararat Town Hall. The Gallery space has grown significantly over the decades since, most recently during the Arts Precinct Redevelopment Project, completed in August 2018. During that project, the Gallery doubled its exhibition and collection spaces, and in recognition of its significant textile collection was renamed Ararat Gallery TAMA – Textile Art Museum Australia.

Exhibiting artists: Jutta Feddersen, Tony Garifalakis, Ann Greenwood, Paula Latos-Valier, Annemieke Mein, Julie Montgarrett, Jennifer Robertson and Sera Waters.