Approaching the idea of 175 felt extremely difficult- what does this number mean? How can it possibly be adapted into art?. As a group we decided that we were going to base our project 175 years prior the now. 1838, the coronation of Queen Victoria.
The first ideas I have when thinking about this topic are Queen Victoria as a widower when her husband Albert passed away; the colours used in Victorian era fashion and the significance of these colours; and finally the V&A museum. I am personally trying to avoid the fashion idea as it really doesn't personally come across as appealing, and feel that if I look more at the Victorian period as a whole, it will allow a much more broader size of topics to delve into through-out this unit. For starting points, I have decided to look at the colours found in Victorian costume and their representations of the era, embellishment and fabric types.
After sitting down together as a group this afternoon, my ideas have become a little clearer. The types of research that I am now looking at more closely involve the Victorian era of fashion, bunting/ celebrations that were involved in the coronation of the Queen, empire, power, colour and detail. Other idea that were sparked in conversation included the idea of restriction to the body through costume- I loosely based my previous unit, Data on the idea of restriction and corsets, so may look deeper into this idea in the coming weeks.
When talking as a group, it seemed that some of the members were already thinking about the unit as an overall result, some sort of final piece and how we could attempt to start tackling it now. Personally I feel that this talk came a little too early into our discussions, as I feel that we need to do a significant amount of research and sampling before we can begin to discuss any type of final piece. One thing that I have picked up on in past evaluations of my work is that I do not do enough in the way of development of samples, so looking at fabrics and embellishments is allowing me to do so this time.
I have decided to keep a sketchbook to go alongside my blogging, just as somewhere that I will be able to keep all of my research, information and drawings in one place. As well as this I have set up a pinterest account, which holds some of my online inspiration for the research side of this unit. I am hoping that these will help both myself, and my group, on the way to achieving some interesting collaborations.