This afternoon we had our weekly meeting in the Union bar for lunch and catch up on the last few days' worth of research. We decided that today really had to be the day that we decided on a solid final piece idea as we are very close to hitting our three week deadline. Using the ideas from Tuesday's meeting, we have confirmed that our piece is going to be based primarily on our under-lying theme of the whole unit- restriction. This idea coming from both the restrictive clothing that was worn by women in the Victorian period, and also the influenced by the visiting of Strangeways Prison wall on our Northern Quarter safari.
Our main techniques are going to be influenced by the main Victorian colours - red, gold, black, blue and white- and finished with embellishment, similar to those found on the era's clothing. We are planning to use knit, print, embroidery, appliqué and embellishments in order to create restrictive pieces that will be tied around Manchester, and photographed. I personally felt that this was a much more interesting idea than making a cushion/ wall hanging. By wrapping our piece around objects in Manchester, it also means that we are targeting the brief of dressing the city, hands on.
The materials that we are going to need for this final piece have been influenced by our own personal research ideas- Rebecca and Emily suggested that fabrics should be used in order to create our piece, with myself and Jess then thinking about more aggressive materials such as wire, and leather. We are taking the idea of yarn-bombing and adapting it into a way to suit our research. Embellishments will give the piece extra beauty, as well as an extreme look - both of which help to back up the idea of restriction through clothing.
I came out of the meeting feeling very excited to begin making these pieces, as well as having a much more positive outlook on unit x. Truthfully the unit has not appealed to myself for the past week or so, mostly because I felt like it was unfair to be changing the brief, and also that research and development were becoming tedious, and that our textiles practice was becoming a little lost. I am so glad to be back in the new building and making samples on the knitting machines, and shall really look forward to next week.
We have decided on a timetable for the start of next week, with Monday being very exciting. We are first going to meet in the Holden Gallery in the morning to have a look at the construction/ deconstruction exhibition, which will hopefully be very helpful, as it is the same idea that we are using for our output - taking an object and wrapping it in different places. We are then going to have a quick discussion regarding the materials that we are going to need for the final piece, then head for lunch before going to the Northern Quarter in search of materials, photographic locations and possible venues for our pieces.