View the ongoing activities, events, and applied research emerging from RAU, and explore the practical dimensions of contemporary textile inquiry and innovation.

As part of an ongoing series highlighting the work of postgraduate research taking place through the RAU Textiles Research Centre and Facility, we are revisiting some of our earlier Master's projects, beginning with Milan Jeon's 2024 Master of Design Research, Denim, Deconstructed: Deconstructing the notion of denim through avant-garde methods.

Exploring deconstruction and reconstruction methods to highlight the rich material culture that remains within discarded denim garments, Jeon's MDes project offers a different perspective on upcycling by focusing on the textile qualities of discarded garments rather than their commodity value, using draping as the primary method to reconstruct deconstructed second-hand denim into new forms of bodily adornment.

Read more about Denim, Deconstructed on our RAU Research pages, here.  

CTANZ Symposium 2026 

RAU researchers Arielle Walker, Rachel Carley, Jennifer Whitty, and Xinhan Zhang presented papers at the 2026 CTANZ Symposium: Haerenga/Journeys, in Whanganui this May. The symposium was a fantastic opportunity to reconnect with a network of makers and researchers around all things textile.  Arielle discussed her practice-led research into narrative embroidered "tapestry" techniques, drawing from a previous textile residency experience with Textílmiðstöð Íslands/the Icelandic Textile Centre. Rachel shared the process of designing a series of paraikete (wool blankets), with colours and patterns deeply connected through her ancestral whenua, and their connection to the complex and ongoing histories of paraikete in Aotearoa. Drawing on more than 12 years of research and practice across Silk Road contexts, including China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, Jennifer explored ‘decolonial unforgetting’ as a practice of decoloniality in fashion. Her presentation considered how encounters across cultures, places and knowledge systems can unsettle colonial frameworks and cultivate relational responsibility, reciprocity and learning across difference. As part of a postgraduate session to bring the conference to a resounding close, Xinhan Zhang shared from her recent MDes research, Feeling of Being, exploring basket weaving as a contemplative, practice-led process that reflects impermanence, memory, and evolving notions of home. Image: Xinhan Zhang, Feeling of Being presentation, CTANZ 2026  

As Matariki and Puanga rise for the new year, Semester Two is beginning again in the School of Art and Design. The RAU Textiles Facility has been humming with activity as new classes are inducted into the space — kicking off with carding! We are excited to see all our students' designs, ideas, and research experiments continue to unfold over the coming weeks. 

As part of the Industrial Design Year Two paper Designing Through Materials, run by RAU researchers Jyoti Kalyanji and Dan Collings, Jonathan Mountfort and Sam Wells from AUTEX Future Lab came in to talk to our students about material systems and regenerative product cycles. Design Through Materials focuses on soft materials, with a particular focus on New Zealand Strong Wool. Students have the opportunity to work through the RAU Textiles Facility to investigate and unlock fibre potentials. This is the fifth year RAU has worked with AUTEX to deliver this paper, and we are always thankful for the team sharing their immense knowledge and resources with our students!    

RAU researcher Finn Godbolt and AUT Art & Design whānau Mitchell McGrath opened their collaborative exhibition at RM Gallery and Project Space in early June. Intrigued by the reciprocal relationship between cinematic and textile technologies, Finn and Mitchell developed a fugitive textile image utilising digital knitting to entwine an ephemeral experience — one that perpetually reveals and conceals itself as the viewer moves through space, threading dualities. The project extends on Finn's research into digital knit potentials, questioning how digital manufacturing technologies can be utilised as physically engaged modes of practice informed by natural phenomena, offering alternatives to standardised industrial knitted textile production.

Throughout June, AUT's Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery hosted a series of graduate exhibitions from the School of Art and Design Masters programmes. From the Master of Design to the Master of Visual Arts, the exhibitions showcased a diverse range of disciplines — including spatial design, fashion, visual arts, animation, visual effects, game, communication, and interaction design.  Congratulations to all graduates! We will be showcasing the work of several graduating RAU researchers, and postgraduate research projects that utilised the RAU Textiles Research Facility, over the coming weeks. Image: Gemma Goldfinch (MDes)

RAU researchers Finn Godbolt and Arielle Walker are part of exhibition These Softly Framed: Narrative Textiles at Masterworks Gallery, 21 March – 18 April 2026. Curated by Bronwyn Lloyd, These Softly Framed "offers a selected snapshot of contemporary textile practice by nine artists. The exhibition seeks to contextualise and examine the resurgence of textile work in recent years in Aotearoa in which practitioners utilise soft materials and craft techniques such as embroidery, whatu, rug making, knitting, drawn-threadwork, patchwork, and weaving to frame stories about identity, whakapapa, gender, language, mental health, place, as well as the making process itself and the vital part that our hands play in the transformation of materials." With Fran Allison, Megan Brady, Victoria Edin, Finn Godbolt, Katharina Jaeger, Lai Lam, Kurt Payne, May Trubuhovich, and Arielle Walker. Image: Finn Godbolt, Needlework, 2026 (Merino Wool, Cherry Wood; 1700 x 1550 x 200mm)

As part of the RAU Kōrero Hour postgraduate lunchtime sessions, Finn Goldbolt presented his research The Ebbs and Flows of Ornamentation: Intersections Between Politics, Technology and Craft, exploring the historical cycles of ornamentation in Western menswear to examine how political movements, industrial technologies, and shifting ideas of masculinity contributed to the decline of decorative dress. Through practice-led experimentation with digital knitting technologies, the research reinterprets historical garment features to explore how contemporary textile production can reintroduce expressive ornamentation into menswear.    

Semester One in the School of Art and Design is in full swing for 2026, and the RAU Textiles Facility has been humming with activity as familiar faces return and new students join us for the first time. Finn and Dan have been busy inducting students from across the School  — including Fashion, Experimental Surfaces, Spatial, Visual Arts, and Postgrad — into the RAU Facility processes, and welcoming our regular users back into the fold. We are all looking forward to seeing their making ideas unfold over the coming weeks.  

The RAU team were excited to support our students at the 2025 Lexus Design Award this week! Now in its sixth year, the Award received 90 submissions from students across four universities: Auckland University of Technology, University of Auckland, Massey University of Wellington and Victoria University of Wellington, with two showcases across Te Whanganui-a-Tara and Tāmaki. A huge congratulations to all the student entries, and especially to AUT winner Oliver Lloyd, with winning project Roll a Rat (a"flat-pack biodegradable rat bait station that controls invasive rodents while dispersing native seeds to regenerate ecosystems"), and AUT runner-up Christine Botha for NiraFlow (a "greywater filter using wool to capture microplastics, protecting both human health and the environment").