MA Show 1

Long time no post.....Work and setting up the show for the MA seems to have taken over. Good news is that I passed my MA hurray. So thought I should show how the show looked at the Holden Gallery, MMU. It has been a strange experience, as in many ways such a show isn't your standard end of year student show more a PR exercise for the University, so items were selected for the show. Initially I was to be in show 2 but the Fine Art tutor selected two of my pieces for inclusion into the first show which had a fine art slant.

Day 1 set up - thought it would be straightforward dress on mannequin, then on Thursday glove on plinth, how wrong can you get.....

'we don't think the mannequin is right, have you tried a dress makers dummy?' I had on Monday and that looked awful, what was interesting was that they were not interested that it was on a mannequin on purpose to represent fast fashion consumption, also fascinating to see my essays comments on the hierarchies within art disciplines so aptly presented. I was quite philosophical about it all so ended up talking to the Fine Art Course Leader who was happy with this selection.

A different way to look at your wardrobe

In the west every man, woman and child acquires 55 kilos of new textiles a year.

A pair of jeans is expected to be completed in 15 minutes by a person in the far east for purchase in our world of fast fashion.

Trying to create my wardrobe into letters.....

Needlewomen revisited

I am in the process of writing up the notes from my experiment last week and in the process downloaded some more images to back it up. It was quite  grim day last Sunday and you can see how the damp affected my hands, so it makes one wonder what the hands of seamstresses would have been like with no heating in mid winter.

The ever watchful camera (interesting tripod)

My companion

Needlewomen

I tried to recreate the idea of sewing solidly for 15 hours as was done by many women in the 1800's creating clothes for the gentry and dieing young often of consumption, and done today by many men and women whist they sew solidly to fulfill high street fashion stores' quotas in Asia locked into their work spaces.

My aim was to sew for 15 hours and record this by taking continuous pictures using a timer attached to the camera, my limited mathematics made some interesting calculations as to how many seconds the intervals should be, final decision 21 seconds. I am usually easily distracted by having lots of other jobs to do also the discipline of being recorded meant I did just sew solidly.

My son taking a photo into the workroom

The camera ran out of battery after 10 hours so i came to a halt I manged to sew 89metres of running stitch, I don't think i would have been a good earner as a piece worker! I could have carried on, though at points of sitting still my feet became a bit numb and my thumbs a bit stiff. I will now put the images into a film format and share the results, then make the decision as to whether it works and whether to go for the full 15 hours with two batteries!!