Week 2- Research continued

This week I carried on gathering more research and creating more drawings. I also had my first tutorial with Lesley. I showed her all of the initial drawings and research I had collected. I was a bit nervous about going to the tutorial as it was the first one of the year, but I felt that I had a good body of work that I was very glad to receive feedback on. The feedback I received from Lesley and my peers helped me see what my strengths and weaknesses were in my work. I think that my main weakness was not being as experimental as I would have liked to be. Lesley gave me a few ideas of different techniques to try which I am going to try out. I am really interested in printing with found objects and trying more collage and trying to create more texture within my drawings. Below are a few examples of the work I took to my tutorial.

Week 1- Initial Research

This week was the launch of the new project brief. We were given the option of 4 starting points for our research tasks. I chose the brief Urban Influences. I started my project by gathering as much research as I could. I started first looking online to find a wide variety of inspirational images. These would create the starting points for creating my drawings. After collecting images online I thought it would be a good idea to gather my own first hand research. I looked at my own surroundings and started by walking around Manchester taking my own pictures of things that I found interesting in the urban landscape. I have started creating a variety of drawings based on my initial research. I have tried using a variety of media in my work but I feel like I should try some more experimental techniques. Below are some examples of my initial research.

Manchester Cotton Board- The Manchester Art Gallery

During my summer when I returned to Manchester, I visited the Manchester Art Gallery to view a textiles exhibition. The exhibition was based on British fashion design using cotton in the 1950’s. Particularly looking at the cotton board based in Manchester.

The cotton board in Manchester was an organization set up in the 1940 to oversee and promote British cotton manufacturing. The best way for them to promote British cotton was to have it used by the fashion industry. Cotton at this time was viewed mainly as a hardwearing and washable fabric, this made it perfect for things such as children’s clothes, work wear, men’s shirts and underwear. The cotton board were trying to secure a place for cotton in the fashion industry. They planned to do this by using it in the evening gown and cocktail dress market. They enlisted the best British fashion designers of the time to create these new high-end dresses using British cotton.

From visiting this exhibition I couldn’t believe that the stunning designs that were created were actually all made from cotton. I didn’t realise the different possible outcomes you can get from cotton. Personally when I previously thought of cotton I also saw it as a hardwearing everyday clothing material. But now after seeing it in this more elegant and sophisticated way I have realised that cotton is a much more versatile fabric than I once thought.

I was particularly interested in the prints on the garments. I was surprised at how well the prints worked with the fabric. Personally if I was printing I would usually use a lighter and more elegant fabric for a dress but after this I now think that I want to be more experimental with the different fabrics and printing techniques that I could use. I find what the fashion designers have created using only the cotton is quite inspiring. Here are some images I have taken of the garments in the exhibition.

Daniel Buren Exhibition- Baltic Gateshead

Whilst I was at home in Newcastle for my summer I visited The Baltic Center for Contemporary Arts in Gateshead. I was very excited to go and view their current Daniel Buren exhibition. I feel very privileged to have seen his work first hand as to many he is considered as France’s greatest living artist and one of the most important and influential figures in contemporary art in the last 50 years. 

In the1960s Buren developed a form of conceptual art, which he called a ‘degree zero of painting’, creating works which draw attention to the relationship between art and context. Buren abandoned traditional painting methods and created an 8.7 cm wide vertical stripe, which he used as a visual tool to help him create his work. Made out of different materials the stripes appear in his interventions in museums and galleries. For almost 4 decades he has chosen to work in situ, responding to a particular location and colouring the spaces in which they are created.

While the stripes have become a recognisable and intrinsic element of his practice, recently his works have become more sculptural and architectural in form, experimenting with the use of light and colour.

I was mesmerized whilst walking around the exhibit by all of the colours and shapes that were created. I really like the variety of exhibition because it can look so different depending on where you stand or how the weather outside changes the way that it looks completely. I was really inspired by the whole exhibition by the way he works in such an unconventional way to create something truly magnificent and unique.

Here are some images of the exhibition that I have taken.

Reflection- Presentation

I really enjoyed the presentation that Charlotte Heylar delivered to us. I found it really helpful and interesting to see what people working in the industry were doing. I also really liked that she didn't just create mass produced digital designs. I thought it was really interesting to see that she produced her work by hand using innovate techniques. 

I felt that our group presentation went quite well although i wish i had been more confident when i was speaking. I have never been good at speaking in front of people but presenting as a group i felt helped. I think that we got across the point we wanted to. I feel that more than others our garment and project needed explaining because it doesn't show a clear theme. Although Rachel and Charlotte did not say a lot about our project i think that they understood it a lot more after we presented it and it made more sense to them. We basically just wanted to get across how much we wanted it to be a very unique and creative look. Almost as if the whole garment was a canvas created by us. 

Reflection- Final Garment

After much deliberation throughout our project on what we wanted our final outcome to be i believe that we have achieved what we wanted to overall. Although we did not agree on everything as a group throughout the project i think our final outcome has been successful in portraying the fairground fun that we wanted it too. After Vanessa had created the trousers for the garment using the geometric pattern fabric we found and the engineered screen print we created on the green fabric, we then chose lots of different ways of draping our created fabric on the stand and narrowed it down to our favourite ones until we agreed on our final garment shape. With me and Nadine both being textiles students we were unsure of how to pattern cut or make up the garments. So this task naturally fell onto Vanessa and i feel that she worked incredibly well to create the final garments and i was very impressed by her hard work and dedication, to creating the ideas that we had all discussed as a group. 

The images above show the front and back of our final garments. And i am really pleased with how they have turned out. At first i was worried that we had been to ambitious with what we wanted to create in the time frame that we had. I am proud of my team and i feel that we have worked well as a group to achieve what we have. Although we didn't always see eye to eye on every idea and one group member was continuously late every day, I feel that we have created what we wanted to based on our initial concept design. This is our final design and illustration of our garment.

Reflection- Creating Our Fabric

We decided to create our own fabric from scratch. First spraying it with silver spray paint to give it a unique shiny feel. After this we all used it like a big canvas. Each of us putting our own individual marks onto the fabric. Using brusho, paints, crayons and inks we created a full length piece of fabric we were using as the base of our shirt fabric. I was really pleased with how our fabric turned out when we draped it on the mannequin. Because i feel that there was a time after creating the fabric where all 3 of us thought we had ruined it. After printing our fabrics and then creating our large one we cut out diamond shapes and appliquéd them onto the fabric in certain places where we thought they fit with our engineered prints.