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on the postponed exhibition 'Fold, Twist, Bind, Knot: Transformation and Resistance through Craft', that would have taken place at @CHELSEAspace in May-June, 2020.
on the postponed exhibition 'Fold, Twist, Bind, Knot: Transformation and Resistance through Craft', that would have taken place at @CHELSEAspace in May-June, 2020.
Some background: the show arose from my interest in the archive of the textile specialist, educator and writer, Anne Maile, which is held at the London College of Fashion.
I was given Anne's first book, 'Tie and Dye as a Present Day Craft' when I was a teenager. Using her techniques, I transformed my clothes & any cloth I could get my hands on, with a combination of commercial and natural dyes, stirring concoctions in a big pan on my mum's cooker.
What I didn't realise then was that Anne Maile had devised and tested techniques similarly, her interest in tie-dye developed as she looked after her children, taking notes and testing dyes in her own home.
Anne Maile was introduced to tie-dye in the early 1950s when attending evening classes at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (as it was then called), Maile would go back as a teacher in the 1960s, working as well for ILEA (Inner London Education Authority) in Greater London.
Anne Maile published articles for educational and family magazines and three books, Tie-&-Dye as a Present-Day Craft (1963); Tie-&-Dye Made Easy (1971) and Tie-Dyed Paper (1975).
To conclude this strand, here's a link to segment of the programme 'Living Tomorrow' featuring Anne Maile, on the BFI website: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-tie-and-dye-1970-online (highly recommend watching, includes a cauldron and dry ice).
And a link to former MA Fashion student, Eleanor Foden’s blogpost about archiving the Anne Maile collection at LCF. Her work alongside Jane Holt, (former Senior Research Fellow LCF), alerted me to the collection in the first place:
https://efoden.workflow.arts.ac.uk/archiving-textile-designer-anne-maile-s-collection
https://efoden.workflow.arts.ac.uk/archiving-textile-designer-anne-maile-s-collection
To move on to some of the works — the display was focused on ideas of transformation and resistance that are inherent within process-based working practices. To do this the show included archive materials, publications and ephemera — as many of the artworks no longer existed.
Because of my own preoccupations, many works incorporated paper, including the distributed multiple, TRANSFORMATION, by Susan Hiller, included in the magazine Wallpaper (issue 2, Dec 1974), but derived from a singular work, TRANSFORMER (as seen in Art & Artists, Nov 1973).
Many works embed distribution as intrinsic to the work — seen in John Cage's set of Edible Papers (1990), that draw affiliations between composting & composition, first described by Cage in the iterative text, 'Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)'.
In @seanjedwards Welsh quilt works, there is a reflection of domestic craft that used patterns influenced by what was at hand - the base of a cup, or in this case, the font from the Sun newspaper. Part of a larger project that describes community in the processes of making.
Quilt making in Wales was supported for a period by the Rural Industries Bureau. Edwards' research into the scheme and the collection at St. Fagans National Museum of History with @StFagansTextile informed his approach.
