Assignment 4: Textile Conclusions, Pushing Priorities & Self Appraisal

Textile Conclusions

The intended audience for my work is more for exhibitions and public spaces. The sub-text of the work is for discussion and therefore requires as many people to see it and discuss the subject matter as possible. This would be the most positive outcome for the work.

Ideally in a gallery I would like to curator to include my sampling and ideas as well as the quilt and other final pieces, this would help the audience understand the journey I have been on and place my work in a context.

I am fairly relaxed about how the quilt can be presented in a gallery or public place, as long as there is enough area for people to really look and examine if they want to and not limited time near it.

I image the quilt attached to a wall and ideally with as much foot fall as possible. It may actually not be a gallery, but perhaps a large company, trade union or medical establishment. Alternatively a library may be a good place to ensure people can reflect and look at the work.

I would like to put some context to the pieces myself through a short synopsis about the work and why I created it.

The challenge of communicating my work is quite daunting to me and I am not really sure how to do this without being fairly formal with my presentation pieces.  The lockdown however my challenge me to come up with different new ideas which I haven't thought of before.

I would also like to look at promoting myself digitally, this is something of a challenge for the scale of items and is something I should work on to improve.

 

Pushing Priorities

It has pained me that I couldn't progress with all the ideas that I set off with at the beginning of assignment 4. In particular I have had to leave my felt sampling and dyed workwear ideas on the back burner for the moment. I would not have got as far as I have with the quilt if I hadn't focused when I did.

The watercolour on felt provided me with softer images and texture than I thought it would. The small samples I worked on were not all a success. I needed to go over the colours several times to get the depth of image and colour I wanted but this given me an knowledge about the substrate and medium.  

I believe I did the right thing and I am really starting to enjoy putting the quilt together. It has been a steep learning curve for me and unfortunately I have not been able to finish it for the end of Assignment 4 but I do feel I have moved on in my work and now see a focus of how I want to progress.  My proposal talked about other mini projects which I have not had time to look but some of the ideas from those projects, like heat mapping, I have been able to bring in to the quilt which has been a real strength in my ideas.

There have been some disasters on the way, my dyeing with beetroot went a bit haywire and had to disband. I had to unpick a lot of my sewing on a regular basis. I am not the neatest sewer but I am learning to improve my technique as I go along which I am really glad about.

Working on mini-folios and small presentations helps to focus where my work is heading at one given time, this really makes me reflect what I am saying both to my tutor and my audience. I have asked for feedback from different sources and will continue to do so during my work as it really does help me build on ideas and progress.

Self Appraisal

1) Demonstrating the use of analysis and creative thinking in interpreting and responding to self-initiated and other projects.

I have really built on the learnings through Personal Specialism to reflect. Reflective time is invaluable and really given me a stimulus to think about what I enjoy about my work and where I want to go with it. At the beginning of this course I wasn't sure what projects I wanted to follow. I chose randomly. However it was only through a competition (during the Research module) that I started to look at emotion and how I could create emotion through art. Sometimes there are lightbulb moments, I think this was more gradual. When I started to look at how art can influence and its context in society I started to understand where I was going. With help from my tutors I have slowly gained the confidence to stop and look around at my artwork and those of others. I have immersed myself in listening to artists, reading about them, watching them where possible. It has allowed me to question where I want to go with my work. Even in this assignment the response to scaling my art has moved my level of work to somewhere new which I am really please about.

2) Show proficiency in using a personal visual language and practical work to communicate ideas effectively.

This is something I am really concious of, particularly with the menopause as this is a topic that is not widely discussed and many women do not feel able to talk about it openly. It has taken me a while to be able to discuss and visualize as much as I am doing now and I can see how reticent I was in the beginning in assignment 2.  Once I started to open up about myself my personal voice and style started to develop. However I want to ensure I keep reflecting that my practical work is communicating with others and not just seen from my perspective.

3) Show both the technical scope and critical understanding of a chosen textile process or processes.

This is my real challenge, I am making a quilt which I have never made before, working on a much bigger scale than before. Whilst I have a naive style in my embroidery, I also want to ensure I refine the technique as I don't want it to look untidy in the places it shouldn't. The way I am overcoming this and finding out what works and what doesn't is through sampling. This allows me to have mistakes and find solutions to go forward. I have looked artists such as Faith Ringold, Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin who create textiles with narratives. I realise it is not necessary to stick to a traditional looking quilt that is perfectly symmetrical on both sides these can be created differently.

4) Demonstrate the ability to develop ideas and sustain a project from its inception to final outcomes that take in to account the audience and/or the requirements of the client.

By focusing on my sketchbook work I am able to be free with ideas which I then can reflect on and select the ones I would like to take forward to sampling. Not all my ideas reach sample stage, many just either don't work or are not suitable for my project or proposal. If something moves too far away from the proposal this can be used for something else. I wouldn't make something fit if it didn't. Through sampling and re-evaluating towards the proposal and the audience. I ask myself is it working, does it create an image which others can interpret and get something from. The quilt has been a really good method of me pulling my ideas in to one overall piece. I really have something to build and gives me freedom to try ideas within its overall look. I have taken many ideas through from inception to the final piece and played with scale to see how they work to fit in with each other.
I refer a lot to my proposal and am aware that the quilt needs to instill discussion to an audience and therefore reflect a lot about this and have enlisted feedback from sources and am now beginning to increase this feedback as I have created more for people to look at and comment on.

5) Demonstrate an understanding of how my work creates with market forces, commission work and/or exhibition opportunities for textile outcomes and within the context of contemporary art and design.

Embroidery and subversive art is a very contemporary art form at the moment, Claire Mort and Hannah Hill are two artists whose work I have been interested in. Both work on smaller imagery than I do however I have learnt alot from their approach and commitment to their art form.
Faith Ringold, Grayson Perry and Judy Chicago have all worked on much bigger scales than I have showing the depth of opportunity in this field.  What I also like about them is that they work with mixed-media another 'menopause' art and these are usually paintings not textiles. However subversive textiles is a growing area and increasing coverage through social media and through work in the community artists are reaching their audiences. I need to research more in this area and understand how I can push in to new audiences. I intend to send some of my work to online menopause groups, but this should just be the start in order to get more coverage I need to think of more visible opportunities which are available.