A whie back we looked at the designs produced by the graduates of the textile department at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA). Yet, as seen in previous posts, textiles can be employed to make intriguing works of art, so let's look at some projects involving fabrics made by GSA graduates in other disciplines.
Poppy Nash illlustrated through her work "Duration: Indefinite" the relentlessness of Diabetes Type 1. The project, consisting in a suit and a series of hats, is influenced by Yayoi Kusama's autobiography Infinity Net, in which the artist talks about the idea of obliteration by taking the things she is scared of and obsessively repeating them in order to confront and mock them.
A diabetic herself, Nash can't make a mockery of her condition, but she tries to befriend it since they are stuck together. She therefore visually explored her condition via printed textiles that evoke the monitoring of blood sugar levels and garments that feature special pockets to carry testing and injection kits.
Esmé Armour's "Portable Window" is instead an architectural fashion accessory for all sorts of people, a simple scarf that can be personalised with whatever view you hold dear.
Though maybe this is a rather simple project, it's also very commercial as it could be used as a wearable piece or as a foldable work of art that can be practically carried around and hang on any wall to make the wearer dream about or remember a special place.
Through a series of banners, printed materials and a denim jacket with appliqued and embroidered slogans, Kat Loudon investigated instead the tensions between hand craft and industrialisation via William Morris and his relevance today in the modern word of art and design.
According to the graduate, despite having been written in the late 19th century, Morris' works are overlooked even though they are still relevant when it comes to creativity, art and socialism. While the final pieces created by Loudon avoid Morris' aesthetic, they concentrate in distilling his writings down, making them more accessible.
Dawn McCance's textile project the "Cloak of Arrogance" was inspired by a quote by American graphic designer Paul Rand from "Confusion and Chaos: The Seduction of Contemporary Graphic Design". In the latter Rand describes postmodern graphic design as "a collage of confusion and chaos, swaying between high tech and low art, and wrapped in a cloak of arrogance".
McCance's cloak, made in collaboration with GSA fashion student Luis Miguel Sanchez, features a meaningless squiggle, one of the decorations that Rand classifies as "a collage of confusion and chaos". A label on the coat states: "This cloak protects the wearer from the burden of design history; 100% Arrogance". Easy to wonder if one day they will start producing and applying such labels to real designer clothes...
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