TEXTILE PRACTICE POSITION 1 (GROUP TUTORIAL)
[edited transcript: me]
"I am starting off from last year; developing on from the Ideation and Insight unit. This was the unit that I feel I made the most progress in. Diana and I spoke about continue to just play and to avoid having any specific outcomes, so that is what worked on over the summer. I was working with materials, specifically, I used plastics, clay and wire. From there, I had created these tiny sculptures and started painting sections of them in neutral colour palettes. These are my starting points, but now I'm starting to work on forming some ideas and a more well rounded researched concept from it.
I have started doing some research and I think my theme is going to be form. So, keeping it quite simple. I'm quite like Egle in that I don't tend to start from traditional visual research and am more inspired by ideas or concepts. I came across something called 'Significant Form' whilst researching; it's not so much an art movement more so a term within art criticism. It's inception comes somewhere between formalism but pre-abstraction.
My understanding of significant form is the notion that form can hold meaning, that references don't have to be a specific object. I think this is true of my paintings. They could be argued to have a meaning or a connotation in their own right without needing a known or obvious point of reference. In the case of the paintings they are observational studies of objects I created; objects that aren't anything in particular and don't look like nothing in particular, they have no function.
Additionally, looking at the division between two dimensional and three dimensional form is of interest but I definitely would like work within route one and stay exploratory throughout the term.
Overall I want to maintain the making process but for my focus to be observation. In a strange way I just want to look, I feel like I don't often stop and look, so taking the time to do so might open some interesting pathways to expand on in term 2."
[edited transcript: Sharon Ting]
So you could be really controversial and could also include some debate on the whole idea of textiles being related to object analysis and archive. You could really throw it up in the air by saying, do we need that reference, do we need analysis or can we just observe.
Why can't textiles be based on imagination, especially in the digital/virtual world we are living in; a great deal of the traditional tangible textiles references you need to touch and feel.
In our area that is really controversial but, it is a way of seeing and I quite like the idea that you could challenge the status quo. Challenge those traditional still lives and florals.
Really begin to look at makers and artists who have used that way of working to inspire their work but I really do think it's all to do with materiality because its your interpretation, its how you use materials and every material has a voice, it has a form. It has a real existence.
So although you say your sculptures are 'referenceless', they aren't because during the making process you were led by the material. It's that whole idea of conceptual making and craft, what it means and the narrative. It's really topical to where we are and where textiles could be going, the question of what will our visual references be going forward.
In terms of the reduction of colour, what you are doing is still really relevant even if it's all subtle. If anything it's probably more so about colour because its working so simplistically. You have to be really into colour to be able to make it so reductive, so I would express all of that.
Have an observation of somebody who uses colour as an example but then potentially challenge this, like a counter balance between something traditional and something that really is getting you to think in a different way.
Really think about how all this relates to you personally you know, what is it that you're trying to express.
[edited transcript: me]
"I am quite an analytical person so I think that is where this all stems from"
[edited transcript: Sharon Ting]
"Look up the Institute of Making; they are all about materials and form. Maybe pick some artists/current makers that you quite like and talk to them; find out what it is that inspires them. Particularly materials based makers, artists designers etc, but living ones you can engage with.
You need to speak to Deborah Orman, Programme Director for jewellery. I recommend a conversation, once you've got your thinking within a powerpoint it would be good for you to talk to her about materiality and the way she uses materials. She has a real thing about form, working with form and letting it speak, say and do its own thing. Then the ideas and designs come from this experimentation. It's a very three dimensional way of working."
