Newcomers to Canberra can often find the capital city a little unfriendly and difficult to navigate socially. Where does everyone go to meet is a common question. However those of us who live here know there is a warm vibrant network of community connections between people that crisscross the Canberra region. This is particularly true of the various art and craft groups that meet regularly. The ACT Textile Network, sadly now defunct, introduced me to so many of these groups who shared a common interest in all forms of textile practice.

The Canberra Spinners and Weavers (CSW) are one of these groups that is still flourishing after 50 years. It grew out of need for a society to promote the skills and practice of craftspeople in the region. Solvig Baas Becking and Susan Beresford convened the first meeting in August 1966 to establish the organisation. Its initial headquarters was at the Griffin Centre in Civic but today the group occupies a community space at the former Chifley Primary School.

This exhibition brings together work by well-known spinners and weavers as well as those possibly not so well known today. There is a variety of work representative of the wide interest of its members and changing fashions over those years. Items include scarves, rugs, wall hangings and garments. The influence of Europe where so many of the initial artists were trained is evident. Solvig Baas Becking (1928-2011), who migrated from Holland in the 1960s, was an important figure in the early days of textiles in the Canberra region. She was a trained weaver and did a great deal through her practice and teaching to raise the profile of weaving as an art form in Canberra. She mentored Pam McDougall who taught Fay Skyring. Baas Becking is represented in the exhibition by a vibrantly coloured work New Bark 1982 and by a beautiful abstract patterned rug Tidal Energy 2004.

Among the early members Belinda Ramson (1935-2014) and Fay Skyring established professional careers. Belinda Ramson's tapestry hanging Kelso 1975 is an intricate image of an architectural façade emphasising the pattern of its architectural detail. It is prescient perhaps of her later work that I saw in a memorable exhibition she had in 2004 at Karen O'Clery's Narek Galleries in Tanja. In the Narek Galleries exhibition Ramson conjured up magical woven landscapes of gardens and buildings framed by windows or doors. Meredith Hinchliffe, the curator of this current exhibition, has also curated an online exhibition of Belinda Ramson's work for the American Tapestry Alliance.

Fay Skyring is highly sought after for her refined and highly skilled weaving. The prayer shawl in the exhibition from the early 1990s clearly shows her technical ability. However my attention was caught by the elegant and stylish theatre coat she wove in wool and velvet to a design by Sarah Kent. Fay Skyring with Di Landsdown are responsible for all the woven furnishings in the heritage part of new Parliament House and a sample book for this mammoth project is included in the exhibition.

More recent members include Monique van Nieuwland whose complex layered imagery in the work 1915 - Henrietta's cupboard, Cato's linen 2009 demonstrates Nieuwland's innovative approach to weaving. The Canberra landscape is a romantic presence in Wendy Sedlmaier's woven tapestry The Brindabellas c1985 and appears as knitted tourist postcards in Deidre Brocklebank's amusing and inventive dress (Views of Canberra 1982) with its decorative knitted bodice. Sandra von Sneidern's woven hanging The Rapids 1998 with its strong image of rocks and water is reminiscent of the swiftly moving Murrumbidgee River.

Group projects also feature down the years such as the wonderful fund raising calendars for 2000 and 2001 with a weaving sample for each month and the more recent (2006) Native Plants series in damask weave with silk.

Fifty years does not seem very long in the scheme of things but it is a long time for a society not only to survive but to flourish. Founding members have died and with them memories. Records are not fulsome about most of these women artists and their works have been subsumed into the community or stored away in art galleries rarely to be seen. We need to be grateful to curator Meredith Hinchliffe and Deborah Clark from Canberra Museum and Gallery for bringing together these works and resurrecting the history of the Canberra Spinners and Weavers to be justly celebrated.