L6 TIP

Context for the Brief Embroidery isn’t just meant to be seen, more often than not it demands to be touched. The textures made possible with embellishment should have the ability to deceive, confuse and fool the senses; looking coarse but feeling smooth, metallic to the eye but soft to the touch. In the trend bible Viewpoint (Issue 41) Trend watcher David Shah writes about ‘touch’ and ‘handle’ as key design imperatives for 2019. He speaks of the human desire to touch sumptuous surfaces and how designers should consider recycling old materials; re-purposed and removed from their original conception, transformed and re-imagined as something new. The Brief For the 2019 Brief the Hand & Lock Prize judges ask you to consider the texture and feel of your embroidery, to create an embellishments with a sumptuous surface that intrigues and surprises. Consider every surface and texture as your inspiration: concrete walls, woven rugs, cold steel, fake fur, old leather, f...

For my self directed brief, I want to focus on the art of protest and translating the idea of protest into my practice. I want to focus on acts of protest such as the motives that people may use as forms of disruptive protesting, such as rioting, burning things, shouting, damaging things or ruining things . I want to relate these forms of protest to the political and historical events of Northern Ireland, ranging from happenings from 'The Troubles', the recent collapse of our government, the idea of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland due to the recent 'Brexit' talks, and also issues highlighting womens' rights, such as the right to abortion. I also want to highlight the disruptive elements of events that take place in Northern Irish culture such as 'The Twelfth of July'. I want this new body of work to reflect the juxtaposition of the beautiful aspects of Northern Ireland, and its disruptive politics, and sometimes disruptive culture, and...

Claire had a really useful session on planning our work and using the process of disruption to move our work on when we feel like we might be stuck in a period of a creative block. I found this idea of disruption really helpful for brainstorming how I might move current work on to produce something new, especially considering I intend on using my work from the 'Colour and Nature' to inspire my new body of work for my self directed brief. As established, I really enjoy the process of combining and collaging, therefore this is something I want to focus on to push my creative brainstorming for my new work. Claire talked about not being as precious with our creative process, and to consider this idea of disruption in our work, such as tearing things up to consider new compositions and almost 'destroying' it in a sense. In summary, we considered three things under 'disruption', these included: 1. Randomness 2. Systems 3. Meta Randomness  The idea that we sho...

I received some really positive and encouraging feedback from our practice presentations; I was happy to hear that my work had a flow to it, and that I had created a body of work that reflected my visual research and contexts. Originally, I had intended to leave most of this work behind and almost consider it as a finished brief, however after our presentation and the feedback that I had received I have now decided against this. My work was described as having a softness and fluidy to it, which was fantastic to hear, as I wanted to reflect such coarse imagery in a really soft and gentle light. Also, I had expressed during the presentation that I was concerned regarding my context, I was concerned that I was thinking too much like a fine artist, but I was reassured of this context. As we come to an end of this short three week brief, we are asked to decide whether we want to continue our ideas on to our next body of work or bring this part to a close. I want to use this gorgeous image...

I feel that I see my work being used as installation style pieces, or for gallery work. I have really enjoyed working on this small scale to allow me to experiment with many different processes and outcomes however I feel that if I push myself to work on a much larger scale this will bring a more obvious and greater context to my work. Working on a small scale has allowed me to focus on the finer and more intimate details of my work, but I want to push myself out of this comfort zone and onto more large scale pieces to allow my work to be visualised in an exhibition space or installation.

I decided to push the drawings that inspired the mark making for my samples, and to create some collages that would inspire further samples. These collages allowed me to consider the scale, composition and colour combinations used throughout my work. I pushed myself to churn out as many as possible so as to consider as many potential outcomes as possible. Through pursuing these collages, I have realised that I almost enjoy collaging with fabrics aswell, combining contrasting textures to create my outcomes.