Urban Decay - Growth
This body of work began with an interest in marginal spaces; disregarded areas of neglected urban wasteland that explode the conventional notions of the picturesque. By meticulously observing these places, I attempted to give them the same kind of status and value as traditional picturesque landscapes found on tourist postcards. I hoped to draw attention to an alternative beauty often to be found in the overlooked. A series of minutely observed pencil drawings of these urban wastelands recorded the aesthetic quality inherent in peeling, rusting and decayed surfaces. These observations formed the basis of investigations into colour and texture utilizing stitch processes and hand dyeing techniques.
Italian Quilting, Pin tucking, Layering, Cutting and Machine Stitching on Dyed Canvas, Silk Organza and Silk Dupion and Cotton Cord have been utilized in order to translate the visual qualities observed into cloth.
This process has edited and refined the resulting visual into more pure moments of colour and pattern. Moreover, the angular, often brittle and hard surfaces of urban decay have given way to more rhythmic, soft and fluid surfaces that make no attempt at the representational. Instead they fix a particular moment; fragments of something once observed, felt or touched.
Italian Quilting, Pin tucking, Layering, Cutting and Machine Stitching on Dyed Canvas, Silk Organza and Silk Dupion and Cotton Cord have been utilized in order to translate the visual qualities observed into cloth.
This process has edited and refined the resulting visual into more pure moments of colour and pattern. Moreover, the angular, often brittle and hard surfaces of urban decay have given way to more rhythmic, soft and fluid surfaces that make no attempt at the representational. Instead they fix a particular moment; fragments of something once observed, felt or touched.
