From woven fibres to sculpted metal and clay, textural wall art is redefining high-end living spaces with depth, tactility and light.
4 min
In 2026, home interior trends are predicted to reflect our growing need for warmth, comfort and personal expression: a response, perhaps, to the fast-paced, always-on lifestyle many of us feel forced to embrace.
And where better to start than the four walls that define your living space? Unlike flat prints and traditional paintings, textured art invites engagement, creating a dynamic ambience in living rooms, bedrooms and outdoor entertaining spaces.
Interior designers are increasingly looking to create a multi-sensory experience, and wall art is a key part of that: blending art and sculpture, creating a focal point, and showcasing changing light patterns throughout the day.
Weaving ways
Sydney-based fibre artist Catriona Pollard uses traditional techniques to transform foraged plant fibres and recycled materials into evocative, sculptural works.
“I discovered weaving more than a decade ago, at a time when I was searching for a slower, more mindful way of creating,” she says.
“I had been working in a very fast-paced environment, and weaving became a way to reconnect with myself and with nature.”
Much of Pollard’s inspiration comes directly from the Australian landscape, from the textures of bark, seed pods and leaves, to the movement of wind and water.
“I see weaving not just as a technique, but as a dialogue with nature, where the materials guide the direction of the work as much as I do,” she explains.
Textural wall art is credited with bringing another dimension to how we experience art. A flat canvas is viewed front-on, but fibre works extend into space and interact with their surroundings.
They cast shadows that shift throughout the day, so the work is never static, it is alive and responsive to light.
“There is something visceral about woven materials,” says Pollard.
“People instinctively want to touch them, to feel the textures and patterns. Fibre carries its own history, whether it is a vine that once grew in the bush or copper wire that once carried electricity, and that embedded story becomes part of the artwork.”
Metal magic
At the other end of the material spectrum, metal is also having a moment. Flexible, versatile and built to last, it brings a striking talking point to entertaining spaces indoors or out.
“I have been making sculptural wall art for over 30 years. I draw my ideas from organic shapes in nature and also from mechanical and architectural forms, and make work that has texture, depth and movement,” says Helen Neyland, artist and creative director at Entanglements Metal Art Studio at her Jasper Road studio in Melbourne’s Ormond.
“Metal wall art breaks away from a painting. It is 3D, it is textural, it works indoors or out, in foyers, large voids and bare walls. As the light passes through the day, the shadows change, stretching and falling across the wall. It gives you a work that is alive. You can backlight it for effect, or just let the light play naturally.”
Neyland notes that more people are seeking handmade, crafted pieces.
“There is more value placed on artisan work,” she says. “Sculptural wall art gives depth, presence and honesty that you do not get with mass-produced pieces.”
Emerging artists
Bluethumb Gallery is Australia’s largest online gallery of original art, representing more than 30,000 emerging and established artists across the country.
Nadia Vitlin is one of them. Based in Sydney, she has a background in geospatial and biological sciences and describes her art as bringing together “the study of nature, humanity, emotions and sociological phenomena through the lens of the scientist”, via the tactile form of clay.
“I do also create two-dimensional works, and love having ‘flat’ art on my walls, but 3D and textured wall art is really having a moment,” she says.
“This may be because they are like hung sculptures more than they are paintings, and can contribute to the feel of a space rather than directly telling a visual story. Another thing may be that the tactility of a 3D object is quite irresistible.
“I always let gallery visitors touch my artworks – within reason! It is especially tempting because I make hard clay look soft, so the brain cannot help but want to feel it to understand it.”
Sculptor Brad Gunn agrees. “I think the element of depth captures the viewer’s eyes more quickly. It invites touch, and the tactile nature gives a secondary element to the work.
“Also, as the light changes in the room, either from the natural sun’s rays, overhead lighting or lamps, the work will cast its own shadows and feel different throughout the day.”
This story appeared in the summer issue of Kanebridge Quarterly Magazine. You can buy a copy here.
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star in an adaptation of the classic novel that respects the romance’s slow burn.
A resurgence in high-end travel to Egypt is being driven by museum openings, private river journeys and renewed long-term investment along the Nile.
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star in an adaptation of the classic novel that respects the romance’s slow burn.
3 minThe most 2026 element of the latest screen adaptation of 1847’s hottest novel, “Wuthering Heights,” is the scene in which Heathcliff repeatedly asks the young lady he’s undressing, “Do you want me to stop?” even as she writhes with lust, indicating an affirmative response is unlikely.
Previously understood as a notorious brute even by 19th-century standards, Heathcliff now exhibits signs of having earned perfect grades in today’s campus training modules.
There’s also a reference to septicemia, which is writer-director Emerald Fennell’s perhaps too-technical stab at explaining the nonspecific Victorian disease that afflicts one character.
Mostly, however, Ms. Fennell has done an admirable job of not modernising a dark and moody romance. If most of today’s filmmakers crave hearing, “This is not your mother’s (fill in the blank)” when adapting classic material, this pretty much is your mother’s “Wuthering Heights,” or at least one she will recognise.
Catherine Earnshaw, played with great soapy gusto by Margot Robbie, is still the same judgment-impaired social-climbing drama queen as ever, and Ms. Fennell frequently associates her with a rich, decadent red—the colour of the bordello—to suggest that she has unwisely traded her body for riches.
Ms. Fennell, who won an Oscar for writing the feminist parable “Promising Young Woman,” doesn’t bother suggesting that Catherine is a victim of society’s impossible expectations for women, which allows her to focus on the core story without intrusive mutters of disapproval for 19th-century mores.
The plot is a template for every Harlequin romance about a woman caught between a sexy beast and a languid but wealthy wimp.
Catherine, who lives with her frequently drunken father (Martin Clunes) on a struggling Yorkshire estate called Wuthering Heights, grows up with a wild, apparently orphaned boy adopted by her father after being found hapless in the street.
The boy at first doesn’t even talk, and seems to have no name, so Catherine calls him Heathcliff. As an adult, he is played by Jacob Elordi , an excellent match for Ms. Robbie, both in comeliness and star power.
The pair grow up best friends and even sleep in the same bed. The desperate attraction between them is evident to both, but Catherine has her sights set on a higher-status mate than this mere stable boy.
After much figurative and literal peering over the walls of the posh neighbouring estate, Thrushcross Grange, she twists an ankle and becomes a six-week houseguest of the gentleman who owns it, the wealthy Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). He lives with his ward, Isabella (Alison Oliver). Heathcliff, in agony, moves away without notice while Catherine marries Edgar.
Ms. Fennell has greatly streamlined the complicated plot of Emily Brontë’s novel, eliminating the framing device, the supernatural element, several peripheral figures and a second generation of characters.
Other adaptations have made similar excisions, and yet the latest version is luxuriantly long, fully half an hour longer than the much-loved 1939 film by William Wyler that starred Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier and David Niven.
Ms. Fennell is a millennial who might have been expected to make the material slick, hip or at least fast; she has done none of that.
The story is a slow burn, as it should be, an extended sonata of moaning winds, crackling storms, smouldering glances and heaving bosoms. When you’ve got two actors as luminous as Ms. Robbie and Mr. Elordi, you don’t need them to say clever things, and they don’t.
Having simplified matters, Ms. Fennell sloughs off the psychological depth of the novel and instead lavishes attention on the heavy breathing and the decor, exhibiting much interest in the ornate mansion in which the Linton family lives (one room is set aside for ribbons only) and the costumes and accessories with which Ms. Robbie is gloriously draped.
Catherine essentially becomes a character in a Sofia Coppola movie who grows increasingly trapped and anguished in proportion to her cosseting. A slate of songs by Charli XCX captures Catherine’s tragic self-absorption without seeming jarringly modern.
The movie is very much aimed at female viewers, and Heathcliff (whose bare-chested form Ms. Fennell’s camera adoringly takes in) is less robustly drawn than in some previous iterations, driven mainly by carnal lust rather than a more all-encompassing rage.
Olivier’s demonic anger at the world came through clearly, whereas Mr. Elordi’s Heathcliff seems as though he’d be content to simply peel away Catherine from Edgar. And though Nelly (Hong Chau), Catherine’s maid and confidante, plays an essential role in developments, her character remains a bit frustratingly hazy.
Still, in the wake of adaptations such as 2012’s “Anna Karenina,” with Keira Knightley , and 2013’s “The Great Gatsby,” with Leonardo DiCaprio, that were all sizzle and flash, “Wuthering Heights” is a worthy throwback.
Deeply felt longing is its own kind of sizzle.
