Out of one's comfort zone

Stephen Jones Showstudio pattern - piecing together

Laid on taffeta silk

In the guise on New Year, new ideas and new skills, I was intrigued when reading a travel report in the Guardian (as ever) from comedian and writer Miranda Hart and her resolution in 2011 to do something out of her comfort zone every day. (She was writing about sea kayaking in Turkey something she would never normally do) I had read of this concept before, a good way to keep you more alert and to create new trains of creative thought and the more new things you try the less worried you become of the next new thing....Something quite important for me at the moment.

So Cut & Sew hats are not my most favourite thing so challenge for today is to try the Stephen Jones pattern on showstudio. So its all cut out and tacked the completed piece to be shown tomorrow.

New Year's Resolutions......

I am not a great resolution person, too many years creating regimental lists of things to give up and not sticking to them. I liked the idea that one should take something up for New Year instead. On reading Guardian columnist Rebecca Smithers article on using her wardrobe more effectively in 2012, and following my own research into the Rag Trade maybe it was time for me to do the same. Take on the challenge to work with the clothes that I have and the mounds of fabric I have squirreled away for that rainy day and return to those halcyon days of creating an outfit not buying one. This has been spurned on even more so when observing family members doing just that Ags' sewing projects and new family members and that youthful exuberance of creating clothes from material that cost a £1 Miss Sabina.

So the question remains as to whether I can resist the lure of that paper bag of happiness, even when visiting the wonders of Cos. Having wondered through the High Street recently I don't think this will be a problem I always feel swamped and almost panicked by the sheer plethora of items, too much choice and my brain does say 'landfill'. Gosh  Lucy Siegle has done her job well! So along with trying to work out my hat route for 2012 I will try and work out the clothing route also and hunt out my old Vogue patterns, I do have the fabric........

11 Rooms, Manchester Art Gallery, 14.07.11

As part of the Manchester International Festival Guest curators Hans Ulrich Obrist co-director of the Serpentine Gallery and Klaus Biesenbach  had invited 11 artists to curate 11 rooms within Manchester Art Gallery. I hadn't read any reviews but happened to see the posters on the way to MMU, as i have been exploring curating in my MA I felt I should have a look. the space was packed and there were queues for many of the rooms, you couldn't see what was inside until you went into the space, which was an interesting process to grab the viewers attention, it was a bit like the haunted house at the fun fair a sense of tension and anticipation. My first room was John Baldessari, an aim to resurrect the idea of having a cadaver to view within a gallery, bureaucracy meant it didn't happen so all the notes circle the room which was in itself captivating.

Review from The Telegraph

In an unexpectedly powerful piece Spanish provocateur Santiago Sierra asked veterans of the wars in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq to stand in an empty gallery facing into a corner without responding or reacting to our presence. They will stand for a few hours each, one at a time, for the run of the show. Because we cannot see the face of the soldier, sailor or airman it is hard to know how to behave in the gallery. He is there but not there, relegated to a corner so that we don’t have to deal with him, and yet it feels wrong to ignore him completely. Many veterans would tell you that this state of non-existence accurately symbolises society’s way of treating men and women who have fought for their country. But there is a further twist. Are they being made to stand in the corner as a form of punishment?

Is it because of something they did? Or something their country asked them to do? Superb. 

In some respects it felt like having the crits with the Fine Art students I wasn't totally sure of the language I was engaged in, the works did affect me, in some rooms it felt like one was becoming a voyeur especially the Marina Abramovic and Joan Jonas pieces. This Guardian review  gives a brilliant incite into the exhibition.