Northern Quarter

My work for this project is based around the Northern Quarter in Manchester. I have been visiting there a lot and looking for inspirational things to inspire my work. A lot of the old architecture and street art has caught my eye. It is a very unique place with a lot of character. There are many small galleries hidden down back streets and tucked under cafes. I have been viewing a lot of Manchester based art and trying to collate a good understanding of what the artists are trying to convey from this place.

Doing research online has also benefited my understanding of this area. I know that the area was a strong point in the industrial revolution, which is clear when walking around all the warehouses and old buildings. These have been converted into studio spaces, vintage shope and record places. One of my favourite places is a little craft centre, which is an old fish market that has been converted. These spaces have been rented for independant artists, allowing them to sell their work and also allowing the public to observe how they create their pieces.

This video is a good visual back up for the information I have found, showing some of the places around Northen Quarter that I have been interested in. The first half focusses on the art and music side of the area. It shows the art and talks about the scene of this part of Manchester. The more research I do into this place, the more of an identity it is having. Its very cultural based and filled with hidden pockets of art and textiles.

Museum of Science and Industry

We visited the Museum of Sciene and Industry to view out space where we are displaying out final outcome of work. The space that we are going to be using are a large set of screen located in the entrance of the MOSI. As a group we are interested in creating a piece to go along side the digital imagery and also the possibility of using sound as part of our final outcome.

Reflective Blog Entry

The work I have produced for this project has been a lot better interlinked then my previous projects. I have continuously worked with drawing and stitch work to compliment each other. I have noticed the connections between my stitch style and my drawing style as my project progressed. I starting off by throwing myself into stitch work and letting the processes influence my work. I feel this was the main basis behind my work. From working mainly with the straight foot and tailor tacking foot, my work has become very linear and layered. With my original image being a complex mix of layers and colours, it was hard to work with. There was no obvious colour pallet or shape. This also allowed me the freedom to interperate the image the way I wanted to. 

My work developed into a series of linear pieces. I used the colour ratios from my image to create the grounds to apply my stitch work to. With the colours being bright I used bright rayon yarns to contrast to them. I found that the satin stitch was the most successful, due to the yarns being so close together it created strong lines across my work. As the fabric grounds were structured to long strips, this created a theme throughout my work. It has a very strong linear feel to each piece, allowing them to relate to each other, though one piece was in grey style. 

When working on fabric and also in paint, I found that I subconsciously created work that was in a similar style. Doing the drawing task of making my own utensils really helped my work. I was quite dubious about starting the process, but the patterns I made have helped in my project massively. The way I applied the paint to my paper was very similar to the way I applied stitch to my work. Both were linear and layered with colour. Away from the drawing class I carried on experimenting with the new utensils I had made. I focussed more on the colour pallet that I was using for the rest of my project. I feel that these samples in my sketchbook work a lot better then the larger ones, as they are more confined and detailed.

This project has made me realise that I like working within boundaries. I feel that I need to add detail to the set place and my focus is also a lot better. After visiting the Cube gallery I became more focussed on boundaries and the space in which they were created. The strips of fabric worked well as they had a set shape so I could focus on the processes instead of the shape of my work. I also realised that I prefer to work with my sewing machine at home as it is a better environment for me to work in. I feel more creative having my personal things around me, therefore I am less distracted and can spend longer on my work.

Cube Gallery - January

I visited the Cube gallery to look at the new exhibition containing work from Fabien Marques and Jon Spencer. The building itself is very interesting, with the contrast of old brick walls and white plaster boards where the work hung. Though my work consists of mainly fabric and paint work, I was instantly drawn to the photography inside. The first piece that caught my eye were by Marques, a French photographer. The work represented the legal prostitution in Germany. The images were not seedy or shown in a derogatory way. The images were about the absence of the people, suggesting just the spaces in which they worked in. I was drawn to them firstly by their scale and use of bright colours, but then as I continued to look at them the smallest details became interesting to me. The use of space and the canvas sized worked very effectively to Marques. 

http://www.cube.org.uk/exhibitiondetails/cubeopen2011exhibition/73

 

The work by Jon Spencer was also a photography piece. His work however was a series of different photographs to make up one image. He has taken images from Holy Trinity Staircase, Waterloo Bridge and Brent Cross Flyover to create a mythical vision of a place in London. The piece is made up of 72 different images, each being printed to their full size, none of them trimmed down. When I first looked at it, the piece looked like one place photographed from many different angles. As I kept looking I realised that the image was not one place at all, the images don't even remotely fit together. I thought this was an interesting take on perception and space. Each image is a confined space, yet they all come together to create a wider and foreign place. 

Opposites

I started this project with the aim of using a lot of colour, with the brief of 'opposites' I was looking at block colour and detail. The image I chose to use does not have a solid pattern to it, but the colour layering creates the detail I was looking for. From this I created colour swatches to represent the colour ratios in sections of the image. I have never used gouache paint before so I found the colour mixing and application of the paint difficult to use. Due to the colouring of my image being gloss but the paint being matt, it made the process more difficult to accomplish. 

When beginning the machine embroidery sessions I wasn't too sure what it was going to be like, as I thought it may be how to use the machine feet to a greater standard the I've been taught before. I was pleasantly surprised when the classes were how to manipulate the feet and the machines to create individual pieces of work. I learnt more about the different feet and ways to use them. As well as this I enjoyed using the pile machine, as I had never used one before. The yarn that I used for this was a perfect match to the colour pallet I was using. Unfortunately the yarn didn't work well with the machine and broke off after a few lines of work, therefore I couldn't create the work that I wished to with this machine.

 

The foot I was most drawn to was the tailor tacking foot, as there were so many different out comes with one foot and one yarn. I spent the session and my own time experimenting with the tensions on the machine to see what it could create. Using a dark/black ground I used glossy rayon yarns to work with on top of this, using the foot to create different sized lines and loops. I firstly worked quite small as I was unsure to whether the yarns would work well with this foot. Using the colour ratios from my swatches, I added the amount of colour to my piece according to these to make sure that the correct amount was applied to my ground. I found that this worked increasingly well as each small splash of colour was added. From this I creating more samples of a larger scale. I feel that these work a lot better as the colour and blank space compliment each other. I feel I could have expanded on this more, adding different processes and machines on top of these pieces to add texture. It took a long time for my project to get going as I was unsure on where I was going from my original starting point. For my next project I am going to do a lot more research and collating information before I start, as I feel this is where my project fell down dramatically in this rotation. I became stuck a lot of the time because I didn't have the initial work to progress my samples further. Due to this I am carrying on with the theme I am using now, as I am going into machine embroidery again I feel I can work a lot better and progress at a higher rate then I have in this unit of work.