Needle Tally - Virtual Factory Standard

The other piece I worked on in the final days was the needle tally, trying to recreate the 15 hour shift of a garment worker and the tight time scales they are set to conclude an order - 15 minutes a pair of jeans, 1 minute a T-Shirt. So 900 needles later and a seriously bruised finger and a few spots of blood, i had a two metre length filled with long needles.

This has space for development which I will do before the MA show, so who knows what may happen.

Pin Pocket

One of the pieces I had designed for the MA work was to explore how to change the white dress to express issues around global fashion manufacture. In the light of the fact that a third of the world's cotton comes fro Uzbekistan where much of the cotton is picked by children taken out of school and they pick in extreme heat and cold with little rest and food the pain was something to address. The childlike purity of the white dress was the perfect vehicle and I wished to insert a pocket filled with pins. Initially it was to be a Japanese pocket, but this proved too difficult on the style of garment, so I finalised with an oval pocket, i was pleased with the result which has since thrown up a variety of other ideas.

Final MA presentation

Sorry that there have been few posts its been a chaotic two weeks, with the final push of work for the MA and Freshers beginning at work, so a week of Sunday night sick feeling!! mmh

Arriving at MMU at 7.30am to set our work up to find the whole corridor full of plan chests! We stayed calm.......

So a slightly manic morning deciding where things should go and then the 15 minutes presentation, after lunch, nerves were running high. So here are some images not the greatest quality and still not sure if it was all ok but too late now.

So two years all completed and not a hat in sight.

3,000 needles

I had to order needles for the other ideas that I had and after much internet searching I found some in Worcester that weren't too extortionate and were beautifully packaged. So much so that I needed to share the images.....

Sample 2 - The Glove revisited

I am still in the thrall of the Pin Glove as it has such strange connotations and different readings. I had limited photographs so began exploring this to assess their viability.

Sampling Ideas

So paperwork handed in for 20% of my MA marks, now got to compete the work needed for the other 80%, not a daunting task at all! As ever I have too many ideas so having to focus and choose one aspect to make very very well......

My ideas have been 1. to develop my images from the dress into a stop motion film
                                 2. to create truth labels for the dress
                                 3. To create a pin pocket for the other dress
and to work with the needles in fabric as a tally system for the time to make a garment in fast fashion.

So first step how to place the needles and whether to use hair or thread.....fabric or paper.......

Damien Hirst

Leeds Art Gallery has a Damien Hirst exhibition on until the end of October.
Hirst has strong links with Leeds, he grew up in the city and attended Leeds College of Art and Design before shooting to national and international prominence in the 1990s with his groundbreaking and controversial works.
The exhibition is be the first dedicated display of Hirst’s work ever seen in Leeds, and traces the artist’s career from his student days to his later works after he had established himself as one of the world’s highest profile artists.
ARTIST ROOMS On Tour is an inspired partnership with the Art Fund - the fundraising charity for works of art, making available the ARTIST ROOMS collection of international contemporary art to galleries throughout the UK. ARTIST ROOMS is jointly owned by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland and was established through The d’Offay Donation in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments.

Sadly no pictures allowed, which from an artist steeped in promotion is quite ironic, though obviously wanting to control all images in the public domain.

I was inspired by the work but to be honest I found the response to the exhibition by students of the BA Visual Communication course at Leeds College of Art more inspiring and exciting. They were looking at the perceptions of their audience and the range of the audience and the thoughts behind their curated choices were considered and thought provoking.

Stephen Jones competition - Judging

Well they finally announced the winning hat to be exhibited alongside the V&A hats in Nee York in Stephen Jones The Anthology exhibition and it was the beautiful dandelion hat which I had a hunch as it was so unique and perfectly balanced. But the greatest thrill was discovering that the gorgeous Miss Kate Jones, Leeds milliner and fashion designer (originally of wonderful North Wales) was one of the three finalists with her truly stunning wooden piece, brilliant news and well deserved.

Stephen Jones winners

There were some fantastic creations so it must have been a tough job selecting, great to see so many inspiring milliners from around the world.

Tate Britain

Back in Yorkshire for 18 hours then running for the train to London to visit the beautiful Agsie and her beau in cosmopolitan East London. As i had the afternoon to myself I went to Tate Britain which I haven't visited before, what a beautiful building and some of my favourite pieces of work within.

The Ophelia made me think of my white dress photos and when you look closely at the painting it is almost photographic in the attention to detail each tiny forget me not and leaf, exquisite.

One of my main reasons for going, was to see the Vorticists exhibition an era of art that I have been fascinated by, I think its the clean lines and use of colour. I didn't take any pictures sorry!

Blurb Books

I had tried a few times to put my images into book form but hadn't quite grasped the software, and possibly more key, the photos weren't up to scratch, so a morning concentrating and deadlines approaching focusing the mind I managed to complete two books which were ready a week later, brilliant. The wonder of the books is that they seem to make the work authenticate well to me at least which was good for the confidence.
blurb book 1
blurb book 2

I can highly recommend the process.

That dress again!

So the dress was left for a week and needing a wash!! I had recorded how it changed each day and as I was so pleased with the other pictures I decided to try to take another series of images in the stream and as it wasn't torrential rain, to leave it in the stream for the day and record it each hour, I think i just like putting my wellies on and wandering in the stream, also maybe a bit of procrastination from writing the learning record! So here are a few of the last images before I headed back south.

Natural Inspiration

Always good for the soul........

Inspiration

When I first visited Scotland many years ago with my beloved, we were directed to visit a small church on the side of Loch Awe, St Conan's Kirk, it was a very Scotch mist kind of day but the quiet and eclectic beauty of the building has always remained with us. So much so that when we have friends over we tend to drag them along to share the wonders. We visited again this Summer and I always something new to be inspired by though what does sadden is that it is slowly crumbling from the weather.

So if you are ever wandering along the road by Loch Awe its worth an exploration.

More of those dress pics!

Following on from my initial foray into catching the white dress through photography, I chose to expand the search further and leave the wet dress on the grass for a week to capture what would happen in this time. My purpose behind the images was to create a focus that makes you look and look again and not take things for granted and hopefully alongside the other pieces I am creating addresses issues around clothes consumption and their manufacture. We had some friends to stay whilst the dress was in situ, I got that sympathizing smile!

Long time no post

Sorry lots to catch up on its been a slightly manic 5 weeks entrenched in books reading and writing for my MA final stage so quite a lot of anxiety and drama but some good bits in the middle and at the end when handing in the final document so fingers crossed I have passed!