PLEASE NOTE MY RESPONSES ARE IN BOLD ITALICS

Overall Comments

This submission is well-researched with a personal interest spurring on your research into ethical textiles. Though narrow in focus, I enjoyed the lively aesthetic of your EPP exploration, which is showing more promise as you explore 3D. Your concept could be explored more thoughtfully and with more variety in your manipulation of materials and composition of the work, which is something to reflect on in part 5.

Feedback on assignment

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

Project 1:

Your research for Research and exercise Points 4.1 laid a good foundation for this project. Your personal interest in vegan yarns gives you a good focus for researching issues relating to environmental and ethical concerns, and the conflicts that emerge between the two sets of considerations. You explored a good range of contexts, e.g. high-end fashion designers like Stella McCartney, to designer makers like Maria Sigma, alongside a few artists. As you through assignment 5, focus on research sources that relate most to your context and your concept – is this textile art?

Exercise 4.2: You’ve dived straight into quite a narrow approach by just using card and English paper piecing (EPP), rather than gathering a range of materials and exploring various potential. This has, however, created a coherent project. The recycled sketchbooks provide a lively surface pattern on what would otherwise be very simple tessellation. The early work was heavily reliant on these papers to give the work a sense of personality- if one ignores the patterns, there is little novelty in the work. It becomes much more interesting as you play with scale and allow the DNA patterns and your concept to guide the composition.

You talk about how your samples could relate to chronic illness, but you haven’t allowed this to challenge the EPP format. For example, scale could be used to amplify particular pieces of information. Or three-dimensionality and scale could be used to create the sense of something swelling or growing? You mention that a layer could be an emotional ‘cloud or mask’. How could you exaggerate the idea that the cloud or mask is veiling something deeper? Could you play with transparency and opacity to create the visual metaphor? Your idea of cancerous cells implanting themselves within a piece of work could be explored through having something unexpected placed within the
regularity of the EPP pattern- a sudden disruption to the EPP structure. (See Anniken Amundsen and Machiko Agano’s work from the Through the Surface exhibition, where Amunden’s work infected / infiltrated Agano’s.)

Try to communicate your ideas by manipulating materials and composing the work in a way that communicates your idea, rather than imposing the ideas onto the work with accompanying text. (More advice about how to do this follows.)

All points raise make complete sense and it is this feedback I felt I desperately needed as I had become somewhat jaded through not knowing how to challenge the EPP format and how to translate my metaphor successfully.

Project 2: Your mind maps help visualise the relationships between your ideas and materials. It’s great that you found this a calming approach. To extend this, write lists of specific techniques you could use- ones that are more specific to your concept. E.g., the idea of dilapidation could be visualised through distressing material surfaces. Practical methods could include scraping, scratching, eroding through rubbing, or sanding. Or you could deconstruct an existing object/material with controlled methods, e.g. unpicking seams, or with more extreme, uncontrolled approaches, e.g. smashing with a hammer… Being more specific in early mind mapping would guide you to explore broader potential, and give you a list of approaches to return to when the project feels “stagnant”.

You mention wanting to use Tyvek and Lutradur to “create distortion and destruction” but I’d also like to you see you create a sense of distortion and destruction from less obvious materials too. E.g., your existing EPP hexagons could be manipulated to communicate the “destruction of cells or molecules due to disease” through piercing, scratching, crumpling… This would also update the aesthetics of your earlier work and make them more relevant to your current concept.

The 3D work at the end of exercise 4.4 shows real promise. It’s exciting to see the 2D EPP pieces extending into 3D. Reflect back on the role scale played in this assignment, and on my notes above about ways to visually explore your concept.

It’s not an issue that you’re only exploring one key concept (as you comment in your log) but it is important that you push the boundaries of that concept.

Lists are something I have neglected due to finding mind maps more productive but I now see the use in them as it helps focus my mind and gives me ideas which I can come back to and explore if one avenue proves unsuccessful.  I do further feel that I am in danger of being reliant on Lutradur and Tyvek and hence will endeavour to explore manipulating the EPP hexagons as suggested.  Scale played its roll in the assignment due to the almost infinite possibilities of EPP hexagons – there is the potential to upscale the hexagons to fit any specific site thereby creating an interactive viewer experience which invites conversation and debate.

Context Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis

Exploring your EPP forms on the body as garments meant you could explore what were very two-dimensional samples in 3D. Given you’ve mainly talked about art textiles in the past, I wondered why you’d chosen fashion as the context for the work. If you intend to specialise in textile art work longer term, using sketching to test future potential within that context, i.e. visualise your ideas as an installation or textile sculptures.
I felt unexpectedly that I wanted to explore crossing boundaries into wearable art but a subsequent email conversation with my tutor has suggested creating “dysfunctional garments that relate to the cellular dysfunction in an ill body” whilst considering site specific installations.  My tutor has informed that wearable art is seen as more craft due to the message being lost due to the commerciality of the garments and is something I really need to consider as I want to stay within the art textile sphere whilst exploring differing contexts and hence the idea of dysfunctional garments are of great appeal.  I understand the need to do further sketches to test future potential.

Research & Learning Log Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis

Sources of research: You are clearly reading widely on the internet, as evidenced by your bibliography for research point4. 1, but no books have been listed in your bibliographies (an issue raised in as.3 feedback too). This is despite many being suggested in the course documentation and a few being available on the OCA online library. Please start reading to inform your practical and theoretical investigations.

It is clear I need to recheck my reading list and also have a further search through my own book collection.

Referencing: This continues to be an area requiring attention. Please familiarise yourself with the OCA / UCA Harvard referencing guide and ensure you are referencing correctly, especially in your essay.

Two examples from Exercise Point 4.1:

– Citations: “(Hitti, 2019).” A source by Hitti doesn’t appear in your Bibliography, so I’m not sure which quote this came from.

– Paraphrasing: You have paraphrased research without citing its source. For example, “The head office itself is fueled by 100% renewable energy but it goes much further than this as it seeks not only to produce textiles with maximum sustainability but it is also committed to recycling or disposing ethically of its waste fabrics.”

There are also a few minor issues which I mentioned in your assignment 3 feedback (such as just using a person’s surname without the need for a title like Ms) which you can act on in parts 5 and 6.

This is incredibly frustrating as I now use Zotero which I have got set to the OCA/UCA style to create my referencing and with regards to the Hitti citation I now realise that the reference has not saved properly and therefore was not included in my bibliography. The paraphrasing issue is an oversight and I will also be checking the issues mentioned in assignment 3 too to ensure they are duly corrected.

Suggested reading/viewing Context

OCA / UCA Harvard referencing guide: http://webdocs.ucreative.ac.uk/Handbook-Harvard%20Referencing1571674800035.pdf

A few sustainability texts available on the OCA/UCA online library include: – Sustainable Fashion: Past, Present and Future by Jennifer Farley Gordon and Colleen Hill – Books by Kate Fletcher: ‘Fashion & Sustainability: Design for Change’ and ‘Sustainably Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys” – A quick search on sustainability and a look through the indexes of a few books shows that there are multiple references to sustainability in ‘The Handbook of Textile Culture’ by Janis Jeffries, Diana Wood Conroy and Hazel Clark which could be a good starting point.

Artists: 1. Have a look at Anniken Amundsen. She made work about her cancer, and the work is both beautiful and evocative of viruses and bodily intruders (two images below).

Her collaboration with Agano meant her ‘cancerous’ forms could infiltrate another artist’s work (two images right). Agano created a beautiful installation of knotted threads dipped paper fibres. Amundsen made beautiful woven viruses which spread through the work.

Here is an article about her work: http://www.fourthdoor.co.uk/unstructured/unstructured_03/anniken_amundsen.php

This artist is of great interest and I will be adding her work to a contextual research blog.

2. I may have mentioned Laura Splan’s virus dollies before – they mimic biological patterns as you have done with the DNA patterns. The following link is an interesting article about how three female artists, inc. Splan, explore issues of the body and disease with varying degrees of intensity: http://www.artandtranslation.com/laura-splan-host/

Prior to responding to this feedback I have already included Laura Splan’s work in a second section of contextual research for assignment 5.

Pointers for the next assignment

• Reflect on this feedback in your learning log.

• Ensure you are referencing correctly.

• READ BOOKS! You may not have much time due to the pace you’ve decided to progress through this course but the online library provides you with the same immediacy as a Google search. If you are unable to act on this before submitting assignments 5 and 6, act on it when reworking assignments before assessment, and definitely use books in your final year work.

• Key task in part 5: More exploration of ways to communicate ideas with and through the materials, rather than imposing them onto the work with accompanying text.