GRADUATION SHOW - PREVIEW EVENING JUNE 13th 2011

Final Preparations

Work installed in studio

It has been a busy but exciting week installing work for our final assessment and preparation for The Graduation Show, at Ruskin Hall, Bournville.  I am pleased to reveal my work within the studio space,  it respresents a long process,  starting with the generation of ideas and early visions of how the work would look,  supported by the research, refining of ideas and editing processes,  making crucial decisions about presenting contexts, and concluding with this final display of the work.

Solutions

Plexiglass Stand-off Frame

You can never know how individual pieces of your work will look together until you see them in situ, and until I saw the poster image alongside the magazine rack displaying the twelve individually crafted pieces of work, unwittingly I had changed it`s emphasis, by creating a confrontation between the two.  My view was supported following a useful tutorial with the artist Shane Waltener, during which I voiced my thoughts, but obtained some really good feedback. I realised that I needed to come up with a different display solution which would communicate the meaning of the work more specifically.  When you browse magazine racks you are faced with an incredible array of images and graphics, all competing for the attention of their own individual demographic, and as I have already indicated, magazines support a culture of mass consumption of ready-made products, rather than one of craftsmanship, tradition, and manual dexterity.  By choosing to display a poster-sized copy of the work, I am emphasizing the seductive quality of magazine image, particulary when placed alongside my twelve embroidered pieces of work. I need to create a juxtaposition between the two.  To solve this problem, I would need to find a display solution for one individual piece of work which suggests it`s originality and uniqueness; of something that is more permanent and cannot be recreated easily, alongside something that can be reproduced, and has limited `shelf life`.  I chose the digital camera magazine on the basis of its strong cover image relating to digital macro photography, and the fact that the camera can lie.  Images can be manipulated but not the kind of craftsmanship my work represents.  I am now looking at an acrylic stand off type of frame,(top) which has a very contemporary look, and presents a kind of barrier between the viewer and the work, conveying a message of `you can look but you can`t touch`, whereas magazines are accessible and can be picked up, handled, and by dipping in and out of, provide a cheap form of entertainment.  By presenting the work in this way, I am also commenting on how working in any craft medium, particularly embroidery, represents a goal-oriented activity, and can often be devalued in comparison to fine art and sculpture, which are rooted in an open-ended pursuit of artistic expression.  This has it`s foundations in the historical connection between the hierarchical structure of art, and the sexual categories of male and female, where the ideology of femininity coincided with a clearly defined separation of art and craft historically assigned to class structures within economic and social systems.

Presenting Contexts

Magazine Shelves in Ruskin Library

The way in which I present my work is always uppermost in my thoughts from the very beginning, and I researched a variety of ways in which I could achieve this for my `magazine` pieces.  It was always an ambition to `come off the wall`, and though I had altered magazines, and transformed them into art objects, I did not want to display them in the traditional context of wall-based artwork, and to reflect the fact that the work is a confrontation between image and object.  A lot of textile work is usually wall based, and I looked at traditional and non-traditional magazine display.  The shelving arrangement above is found in Ruskin Hall Library, and I liked it for its simplicity and contemporary design, I also felt that I could recreate it in the 3D workshop substituting the metal shelves with perspex.  Finally I opted for a traditional style magazine rack consisting of four shelves, each of which would hold three magazines.  I was forced to reconsider my thinking, however when I had scanned one of the magazines, and it was printed as an A1 size poster to be displayed behind the magazine rack.  As soon as I saw the image alongside the original work, I could see immediately that in the confrontation between the image and the object, it seemed as if the image was winning, and I found this disconcerting at the time but then interesting because of the dilemma it seemed to pose.

Embroidery and It`s Associations with `The feminine`

Classic Bike Guide

Windsurf Magazine

Despite the distortion of the early history of embroidery, when male and female embroiderers worked professionally alongside each other to produce highly prized and valuable textiles, and also a number of very skilled male contemporary artists working in this field, embroidery will always have lingering associations with the feminine.  I was very conscious of this in my choice of magazines, and I have therefore attempted to chose from a wide range of material appealing to both male and female consumers.  This also subverts the idea that magazines appeal mainly to women, and are viewed as a low-brow form of entertainment, which can be dipped into, making their format easy to pick up and put down again, and therefore more appealing to women. This theory is explored by the writer Linda McLoughlin in her book `The Language of Magazines`, in which she puts forward the view that this is a very outdated idea, when we look at the number of women working outside the home, and the growing market of magazines aimed at men.  When chosing magazines for this project, I found a far greater number of men browsing through  magazines, and from personal experience, the males in my household subscribe to, and buy more magazines than I do, apart from those purchased for this project of course.

Early Work

Magazine image printed on fabric with hand stitched and machine stitched cutwork techniques applied

Studio wall display of early attempts

In my earlier attempts, I started to work across a range of different types of magazines, encasing them in calico fabric, which I used for its strong even weave, and because it was less likely to fray when cut.  The stitches were worked in white embroidery thread so that they would show on the cream coloured fabric and the fabric was also chosen because it allowed some of the original magazine to show through. I also used a tearaway embroidery stabiliser to support the work whilst it was in progress. Another technique I attempted was to copy a magazine cover onto transfer paper using my printer and iron onto the fabric (top).  I then used a combination of cutwork hand stitching and machine applique stitching, which proved to be too clumsy and denied me the finer details, and I made the decision to continue to use hand stitching, although this was time consuming, the results were worth the effort.  My first attempts were clumsy as I had not used this technique before, but I got better and faster, completing sixteen separate pieces of work, which I edited down to twelve final examples of what I consider to be the best, each one representing hours and hours of work. As a result of some of the earlier work, I received feedback on the lines that maybe my work represented a kind of censorship.  When I analysed this, I realised that this was due to the kind of magazines I chose, but also the way in which I had adhered more closely to the original image.  I focussed more specifically on the leisure market, and  `how to` genre of magazine, and started to use my own design elements, to subvert the image rather than just reveal glimpses of it.  I think the censorship issue also pre-supposed that I disliked, or found the images distasteful in some way, whereas in fact I chose the magazines on the basis of the strength of their front cover images, and my engagement with them.

Cutwork Embroidery

Initial stages of cutwork technique

Example of Cutwork embroidery

Cutwork embroidery involves cutting away areas of evenweave fabric along pre-designed lines of button-hole or satin stitches.  Initially a line of running stitches is made, (top) to cushion or raise the lines of stitching.  It is sometimes called embroidered lace but is not actually a true lace, with cut away areas supported by button-hole bars of stitching providing support, and which are also incorporated into the design.
This type of embroidery evolved from drawn thread work carried out by nuns for ecclesiastical textiles; popular during the renaissance it was highly valued by royalty and nobility, and alongside other forms of embroidery, reflected the power of the church and the state.
There are different types of cutwork, one of which is the more familiar Broderie Anglais.  The technique was traditionally stitched in white thread on white fabric and used for table linen, and collars and cuffs.