Julie Montgarrett has worked with textiles as a core concern since the late 1970's. She played a pivotal role in the development and validation of textile art in Australia as an artist, lecturer, writer and curator. Fleeter represents a period in the artist's practice in the 1980's when she was concerned with extending the conceptual and spatial possibilities of textile art. Her major figurative works of this period combine a range of materials and techniques applied to a canvas support. At times both the support and the surface of her works are subjected to cutting, layering, slashing and stitching to create textural complexity and spatial depth. Various materials and traces reveal the artistic processes in her textile constructions.