PIETY AND PROTECTION: TALISMANIC TEXTILES IN ISLAMIC SOUTHEAST ASIA
Speaker: Robyn Maxwell

This lecture examines the role of a specific group of textiles created by Islamic communities in Southeast Asia. It considers the adaption of older textile types to changing rituals and the development of forms and motifs with more specific Islamic imagery. In particular the paper focuses on textiles with Islamic (and other) calligraphy and their place in Southeast Asian textile usage.

Introducing
ROBYN MAXWELL

Robyn Maxwell is Senior Curator of Asian Art at the National Gallery of Australia and Senior Lecturer in Art History at the Australian National University. She has published and lectured widely, nationally and internationally, on Asian art, especially textile history. Her publications include Sari to Sarong: 500 years of Indian and Indonesian textile exchange, National Gallery of Australia, 2003; Textiles of Southeast Asia: Tradition, Trade and Transformation, Oxford University Press, 1990 (reprinted in 2003 by Periplus, Singapore, with foreword by Mattiebelle Gittinger); Cultures at Crossroads (with M.Brand and A. Reid), Asia Society, New York, 1992; and Southeast Asian Textiles: The State of the Art, Monash University, 1987. The curator of a number of significant exhibition, Robyn Maxwell is currently working, with James Bennett (Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide), on Crescent Moon: Art and Civilization in Islamic Southeast Asia.