Maria Grazia Chiuri’s love of art is well documented and she has done much to champion female artists since her appointment as creative director of Dior in 2016. She has used recent shows at Musée Rodin to profile the work of artists such as Niki de Saint Phalle (in 2017 the floor was covered with mirror fragments resembling the artist’s home in Tuscany). That same show included a T-shirt inspired by Linda Nochlin’s 1970 essay which asked Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

For her 2020 Cruise show Chiuri collaborated with African artists and artisans, most notably Mickalene Thomas who reinterpreted the classic Bar jacket with beading, embroidery and organza. She also commissioned feminist art icon Judy Chicago to create an immersive installation which feature an oversized goddess, 21 banners of woven embroidery and a flower-strewn runway.

Continuing her focus on embroidery and craftsmanship, this week her Dior Spring Summer 2022 Haute Couture show featured the work of the two Indian artists, Madhvi and Manu Parekh, which entirely covered the walls of the runway. A statement released by Dior described this as: “An inspiring creative dialogue, exalting virtuoso skills, where embroidery is transformed into a collaborative mode of expression, at the crossroads of art and craft.”

The colourful, dynamic walls were a deliberate contrast to the simplicity of the clothes in clean fluid lines created in a neutral palette of white, ecru, silver lamé and black. The vast tapestries, which took 200,000 hours to create, will remain in situ until January 30 as “both an art gallery and a celebration of the connection between artists and artisans” – a must-visit if you happen to be in Paris.

Closer to home, there’s still time to see “Electro-Fuse” at NCAD Gallery, a new exhibition of work by Brenda Aherne and Helen Delany, the duo behind the Electronic Sheep clothing label. The duo, whose work has been regularly exhibited at London and Paris Fashion Weeks, are best known for their innovative unisex knitwear reflecting a wide range of social, cultural and political moments. While the “Electro-Fuse” exhibition captures collaborations with a range of artists, designers, musicians and stylists, it also unveiled a new artwork “The Kilburn Tapestries”. Curator Anne Kelly explains, “The more than three-metre-long, detailed tapestry illustrates the untold stories of the Irish community in the London Borough of Brent, Kilburn and beyond and features music promoter Vince Power, tour manager Gus Curtis and Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy.” The exhibition is at NCAD Gallery, Thomas Street, Dublin 8 until February 11. Later this year the NCAD Gallery will transfer the exhibition to Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; www.ncad.ie.

The Roscommon-based artist Frances Crowe explores emotion and memory in her tapestries which also record world events. Displacement, separation, climate change and global warming are constant themes. In “Displaced” she narrates the story of the plight of Syrian refugees as they fled from their war-torn country in search of safe refuge in Ireland. She compares their flight to the famine victims who were forced from their homes in Roscommon in 1847 and travelled by foot along the royal canal to the coffin ships in Dublin transporting them to Canada. Her most recent large work “Torn Apart” handwoven in cotton warp and wool weft, explores the cruelty of social injustice and family separation; www.francescrowe.com.

Dublin-based artist Isabel Nolan works in various mediums from sculpture to drawings and in textile. Most recently her exhibition “Spaced Out” at Kerlin Gallery, Dublin 2 featured eleven new paintings and two large scale tapestries inspired by her ideas of the world’s future and what that might look like. The show, a gorgeous celebration of colour and gesture, included the tapestry woven in wool, “When the sky above will not be named” (pictured ) which depicts the disintegration of the sun and spans over five metres; www.kerlingallery.com.

Visitors to National Gallery of Ireland can’t help but see the huge Mainie Jellett rugs hanging in café atrium. As one of Ireland’s finest 20th century painters Jellett (1897 – 1944) was a protégé of Eileen Gray, who encouraged her to produce her own rug designs. A current collection of rugs, made by Ceadogán Rugs at their workshops in Co Wexford, are based on her original gouache drawings and have been produced with the permission of the representatives of the Jellett estate. Made from wool or a mix of silk and wool, they are produced in limited editions and are often used as dramatic wall hangings; www.ceadogan.ie.