Elle Magazine, November issue 2012

Whilst reading the November issue of Elle Magazine this week, I came across an article that featured a range of up and coming designers in the field of knitwear.

These designers are reinventing innovators of the traditionally twee and kitch proecess of knitting and are developing high end pieces for a fashion conscious customer who is looking for something new.

Mei Lim Cooper (see work, right) uses knit in an unexpected way and was my favourite designer to appear in the article which identifies a wave of new knitwear specialist fashion designers.

The designs are a result of projects based on contemporary arts and quite amusingly, on football socks. The ways in which the ribbing on the garments looks like football socks is also quite humorous but helps you to see the innovative use of stitch.

I also like the way that it is quite unclear as to where you would place your arms, legs and head when putting the piece on and the design of the jumpers are quite complex- nothing like the knitted jumpers that you'd expect to typically associate with knitting.

I have also attached a copy of the first page of the article that people might find useful, but you could read it fully in the magazine which I'm sure the library will keep a copy of, page 86-87.

Prints with cut out sections

Printed digital images with cut out. Additional prints were then placed behind the original patterns.

Journeys drawings statement

I've started to explore looking at the routes I take on journeys everyday, by plotting these on the online service, Google Maps. Then, after establishing which routes I had taken, I have taken the most interesting pieces of that map and created repeating patterns from those pieces digitally on photoshop.

I have then decided not to leave the pieces as they were but develop them further. I took print outs of the new prints that I had created and then decided to draw on top of them, in a non traditonal sense. I drew a design taken from the maps I had previously found and then decided to cut away the pattern using a scalpel.

Journeys drawings

MA Show, Holden Gallery, Manchester School of Art

Thursday, 25th October.

I attended the opening of the MA Show which took place at the Holden Gallery which is situated in Manchester School of Art. I was immediately surrounded by visual inspiration that took the form of installations, photography, illustration, textile work (both for fashion and for a gallery setting) and many others.

I have already seen a few exhibitions featuring Rachel Goodyear, including an exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park last year. In this particular show, I really liked her clever use of laser-cut paper in conjunction with her beautifully illustrated, macabre drawings. In addition to this, I also found her porcelain models of birds, encased in glass to be very delicate and intriguing.

Her choice of media shows a delicate side to her work, showcasing it's beauty and quality in crafting, however this is juxtaposed against the eerie and quite disturbing images, often portraying animals as humans and growths pertruding from the bodies of animals and humans.

Debbie Sharp's installation of windows was another piece that stood out for me. The thing that I found interesting was the fact that Debbie is studying photography and this installation piece featuring sound work, animation and drawing seemed quite far removed from typical photography work. There was a clear attention to detail, a small inscription in dust on a hanging window, fingerprints could also be found in the dust. Also, the eerie sounds played into the dark installation were also interesting and often startled the viewers that were looking at the piece.

Liverpool Biennial

Whilst on the Liverpool trip, I had the word "journey" going round and round in my head. I was struggling to conclude where I would take this very broad starting point and it did become quite frustrating. However, whilst visiting the Biennial exhibition at Tate Liverpool, I saw some examples of very interesting processes and methodology that intrigued me and triggered a catalyst of ideas in my head.
The first piece to intrigue me was "The Hotel, Room 47" by the conceptual French artist Sophie Calle, known for her extreme and unusual ways of acquiring visual information. In this particular series of working photographs, Calle had gained access to the hotel rooms of guests staying at a hotel that she had a temporary job as a cleaner at. She had applied for this post purely for this reason: to look into the lives of the guests staying there.

She applied a technical and almost forensic method to acquiring information, creating lists on items found in the room, how they made her feel and even taking small details such as the sizes of the shoes that were worn by her 'subjects'.

I find her way of working fascinating. Very strange but the dedication she shows towards her practice is admirable but at the same time slightly unnerving. I do enjoy the idea of surreptitiously acquiring visual information and it could possibly be a good starting point when looking at Journeys as part of the Origins unit of the course.

Another piece of work that I was particularly drawn to is the piece entitled "United Kingdom" by Layla Curtis. I had already considered working with geographical and quite technically detailed maps to explore day to day journeys and this piece has encouraged me to run with this notion and explore it as deeply as possible. Altering the locations geographically on a map represent places that she has visited and in what order as well as reflecting on travelling as an "integral part" of her life. The idea of altering something that is widely known to be true is quite a humorous spin on looking at journeys and it can also be quite reflective and would be an interesting way to look at the places that I personally have visited chronologically and placing them next to each other on a map.

Kite photographs