What kind of image does the term "textile art" conjure up for you? The geometric purity of Quaker quilts, rococo decoration or embroidery-by-numbers?

There are elements of all three, and much more besides, in The Art Of The STITCH, an exhibition now showing at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery's Waterhall Gallery.

Paying its first visit to the city, this is a biennial international survey of textile-based art. There are works from Lithuania, the USA, Canada, Hungary, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan, Cyprus, Finland, France and Germany but, as it happens, most of the most interesting work is from the UK.

It's a very broad church which can include both the cheerful comic-book kitsch of Zara Merrick's Queen Berenice's Hair and the cool intellectual elegance of Sarah Burgess's Pulling On, Slipping Off, a hanging on which thread is used to create a delicate drawing of a pair of hands putting on and taking off a transparent red glove.

The use of thread in imitation of pencil drawing links many of the exhibits, and reaches an extreme of illusionism in Andrea Cryer's KATH, a pair of portraits of the same women in youth and old age, where you really do have to look closely to convince yourself that this is a textile picture.

Textile drawing of a rather more imaginative order is presented in Skaland Bedehus, a large banner by Maria Ryan from Norway, representing a childlike view of a childhood memory of family life.

In a field dominated by female artists it's not surprising that gender politics provide another thread. Caren Garfen's Womanual "All Done and Dusted" uses the medium of an endless screenprinted tea towel to reflect with domestic homilies on the weight of women's work. This is one of several works that references various contemporary artists, as though to stake a claim for the prestige of fine art.

One work which effortlessly places itself in that category is 84 Hours by Sarah Brown, which is certainly one of the most impressive things here. A sinuous floor sculpture made out of bound reclaimed paper, it attracts attention first for the aesthetic appeal of its shape and the attractive colour of the brittle brown paper.

However, it gains in meaning when you discover that it is a reflection on the life of William Wood, a bookbinder who died in Newgate Prison in 1788 after being sentenced to two years for pressuring his master into reducing his working week from 84 to 83 hours.

The artist worked on the piece from 6am to 8pm on six consecutive days, recreating Wood's working hours.

Other highlights include a pair of contrasting quilts displayed near to each other. Katherine May Carey's Action Man Quilt is made up of Action Man costumes while Beck Knight's Drunkard's Path is made of squares cut from aluminium Guinness cans. "Drunkard's path" is a traditional quilt pattern.

Working in a tradition of pictorial embroidery, Sue Stone's Women with Fish, showing her grandmother posing outside her terraced home in Grimsby holding a large fish, is simultaneously homely and surreal, while American artist Cindy Hickok constructs a parody of Leonardo's Last Supper with figures lifted from the works of Cezanne, Degas, Van Gogh, Watteau, Renoir, Grant Wood, Modigliani and others.

* The Art Of The STITCH is at The Waterhall, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, until June 15; (Mon-Thur, Sat 10am-5pm, Fri 10.30am-5pm, Sun 12.30pm-5pm; admission free).