nicolecon-divergentpractice

[nicolecon-divergentpractice]

as I got further into the project I decided to continue with my embroidery work, this time taking a more “intimate” garment as my ground to work on.

again, I was trying not to buy anything for this project so I decided to just use an older pair of underwear I had lying around.

I chose to continue my text based work with this piece but I wanted to experiment a little more with the text itself and the placement of it on the garment/my body.

the roots of the negative stereotypes carried by the word “consumption” (like so many things) can be traced back to the bible and early ideas of religion.

with gluttony being listed as one of the many sins along with things like murder and treason.

while my project focuses more on the idea of consumption rather than greed I think the rate at which men consume sexual content (sex, porn, fetish content, etc.) is something that should be called into question throughout this project.

I thought the text and placement of it would raise the ideas wanted without any further context or explanation needed.

the text reads “greed brings ruin”

the text itself is a shortened idea from a similar bible verse.

I also liked the ideas that the latter portion of the quote brings in. the idea that it’s only those who deny the greedy or shun them will be saved or lives by “Him”.

I think this is relevant as it almost translates to the modern idea that women are responsible for men’s desires and rather than men managing their desire, women have to remove “temptation” with modest clothes and attitude.

[nicolecon-divergentpractice]

Since learning how to sew, I wanted to experiment with the ground i was sewing on to. Since the roots of the project lie in the semiotics of fruit and more specifically the waste of fruit, as that was my main focus during my 3rd year project I chose to sew into exactly that. Again, to stick with the main theme of this project and the pillars of it, I used whatever fruit I had in the fridge which actually happened to be easy peelers, another pillar point in the root project of this years work.

A lot of my fruit work last year involved the waste of fruit, more specifically oranges and the peels of them, see below an example of some of my work with oranges and their peels from my project last year;

I wanted to explore the idea of sewing into flesh as some of my ideas for performance work involve the imagery of sewing into skin or wounds (fake of course) and I thought the flesh/skin/peel of the orange would be perfect to explore this.

I was also interested to see how to peel would react to the embroidery as I know the peels of bananas and apples would most likely bruise from something similar but I wasn’t 100% sold on how this peel would interact.

In terms of what I wanted to embroider on the peel, I found inspiration without looking. While reading Lauren Elkin’s ‘Art Monsters’ she talks on some pretty vulgar film pieces done by (artist) in which she speaks on how the piece was perceived by the audience (as it was a piece portraying a sexual encounter) and what she thinks about the piece herself. The description that intrigued me is when Elkin describes how the viewer absorbed the material saying the viewer tends to cut the body into sections “CUT/CUT/CUT” and absorb them that way “CUNT/FLESH/COCK/FLESH”. The way Elkin describes the way people split the body and more specifically the words she uses really caught me off guard, the words chosen are overwhelming vulgar and are dome of the lowest of the low even within the brackets of “bad words”. It struck me so effectively that they were the first words that came to mind when I thought of this piece.

Before I put any thought into it I decided to just start embroidering the peels with the words.

While sewing into the peels my fingers began to smell quite strong, my needle got sticky and the peel started to rip.

I think the process of sewing into these peels was a performance piece alone, regardless of the outcome.

Another point in Elkins book she discusses an artist who uses language in quite an abstract way.

Regardless of nothing tongue, separating any language into sections throws someone off.

CUNT into CU NT implies something more almost? That’s what I wanted to explore in the thread colour, while there wasn’t enough room on the peel to create space between the letters, it separates the word in the brain of the view, at least upon first view. It’s like your brain doesn’t immediately recognise the word and works a title harder in that split second to recognise the language.

I learned quite a bit from this little experiment, I enjoyed the act as a performance and I’m keen to see how they develop as the peel begins to rot and dry out.

Regardless, my needle is still sticky, my fingers still smell and the integrity of the piece is compromised by the rips in the flesh. I think thats’s exactly what I needed to get from this.

[nicolecon-divergentpractice]

Moving on from scrap canvas I wanted to finally sew into clothes.

I chose the same phrase and grabbed anything from my wardrobe that I don’t really wear anymore, that happened to be a pale green vest-like top.

It was probably bought years ago from a fast fashion brand like Primark.

Regardless, it became my first canvas.

I actually struggled a lot with this first piece, I didn’t realise the nature of the stretchy material would be so vastly different to the materials I had been working on so far. I had to take so much time away from this piece to actually get it done but nevertheless it was another great development piece for my skills.

I chose to embroider the same text as my practice pieces but take what I had learned and make the text cursive this time instead of capital.

Once the piece was done I took some photos of it on.

Once the front was done I really started to think about how the piece felt slightly unfinished to me so I decided to add more text on the back, more antagonistic but mirroring Emin’s work in the way it seems out of context off the body.

Once finished I took some more artistic photos using coloured lighting.

I really loved the way the top clung to my body and really dramatised the rolls and curves of my midsized body. The text stretches out across my chest, pulling at the stitches and the red lighting plays with the red and blue text, drawing attention to the invitation to “eat me” while neglecting the added context of “alive”.

[nicolecon-divergentpractice]

A big inspiration I keep looking at for this project is Tracey Emin, more specifically her work with fabric and embroidery.

The way Tracey uses text in her embroidery work is so interesting to me, it’s often such random text and thoughts that don’t seem to make sense, almost like she used the fabric to just spew ideas or as a notepad, sewing conversations she had with herself and thoughts that no one else understands.

Her work probably doesn’t make a lot of sense out of context which is what I really like.

[nicolecon-divergentpractice]

This is when I began creating actual development work. I decided to take the cannibalistic themes and work on some text pieces that would develop my sewing skills further but also create work I’d be able to develop an work on throughout this project.

I decided to take my skills in sewing letters and create something on theme.

I chose the phases “eat me alive” based on a previous project.

This project is a continuation from a previous body of work. In 3rd year, i worked on a project that centred women and the semiotics assigned to them, more specifically fruit. This project focused a lot on the anger and frustration that can come from having your innocence ruined or stolen, the penultimate piece is pictured below.

To me, using the same text as a previous project really ties these two projects together and explains that they are an expansion of one another.

The imagery and semiotics of fruit is not something I want to completely abandon this year so bringing this project back to the ideas surrounding it is a way for me to keep these ideas in the loop of the theme.

This little embroidered piece was still very much a learning lesson for me to use going forward.

You can see my lack of skills in my wonky letters, more specifically the “v” where it kind of curves in which I really enjoy, it gives the work a “homely” feel and makes it known in the work that this is done by hand and not by a trained professional or a machine which is really important for this body of work.

While making this piece I realised that the capital letters that I thought would make the sewing easier, were actually making it a lot harder than intended so with the next piece I decided to try sewing the words in cursive to see if that would be any better, I got this idea from looking at contemporary sewing pieces and businesses and realising they all use cursive writing.

I think this piece is a definite improvement from the long and straight letters in terms of theme and execution.

[nicolecon-divergentpractice]

going into this project, I was aware I have no experience sewing but the choice in medium was intentional. I wanted to work in something that was considered “women’s work” but I also wanted this project to intentionally document my learning of this skill, the act of teaching myself to sew would be some kind of performance art within itself.

my materials would also be very intentional.

both my mum and my paternal gran are able to sew, hence why I never found it necessary to learn. with the idea of the learning being intentional I didn’t want to just purchase a sewing started kit from amazon and go from there, I wanted to start with the kit that had fixed so many of my clothes throughout my whole life so I politely asked my mum if I could borrow her supplies and she agreed.

this is my mums humble sewing kit, it’s not elaborate or excessive but it’s been the kit my mum has used my whole life, for as long as I remember. any time I had a rip or tear, needed a name sewn into my school uniform, or had a fatal injury to a teddy, my mum would open the bottom drawer and pull this little tub out.

note the “vintage” needles, her favourite needle laced into the thread she last used, and various bits of thread saved in case they were ever useful.

the selection of colours are also interesting, my mum never bought a kit, she just bought thread when she needed it so in there she has various greens that were bought for sewing my dads army uniform/badges, white for school shirts, navy for school blazers, a burgundy for brownie uniforms, and purple (my mums favourite colour).

there is also an eclectic selection of objects in there including school badges, screws (?), and a foreign coin. I’m not sure where any of these came from and I don’t imagine my mum would know either.

now I had my materials, it was time to learn!

while I would love to sit with my mum and have her teach me to sew, that wasn’t possible. my mum struggles a lot with chronic pain and various symptoms from medication and mental illness, including shaky hands which means fine motor skills like sewing and incredibly challenging for her. this is another reason learning to sew is so important to me.

since my mum wasn’t able to teach me I went to this next best thing…someone else’s mum on youtube!

I was also intentional with the fabrics I used for sewing, I didn’t want this project to create any waste and was set on using what I had in hand like so many generations of women before me would’ve done.

my initial idea for learning to sew was to sew together tears/rips so once I learned a simple stitch and a back stitch, I made some small cuts in the canvas I was working on and attempted to sew these pieces together without any tutorials, as i said before, I wanted every detail of this body of work to be intentional and thought through with purpose. I wanted to learn a few simple stitches and then go on to teach myself the rest, again, just as the generations of women before me have done.

Here is how the stitches turned out.

I think it’s visible from these development pieced that I don’t really know how to sew and that’s exactly what I wanted.

There is no “finished product” feel and you can see my loose stitches and fumbling work. I think this gives my work more feel and personality within the context of this project. You can see that I’m a beginner and that I’m self taught, to me you can almost see me fumbling and pricking myself in the finger countless time to achieve this simple stitch.

Moving past this, I feel like I had my back stitch maybe not mastered but I’m confident I know what I’m doing and I a work with this stitch.

Knowing I wanted this project to involve a lot of text, the natural next step to me was to practise the alphabet.

While doing this, continuing to use the needle and thread I borrowed from my mum, Leona (a friend and studio peer), introduced me to embroidery thread. She showed me the difference in thickness and how the threads can be pulled apart to experiment with how thick you want the thread.

Leona even let me take a long piece to use over the weekend as practise, so that’s what I did.

I even chose to be intentional with the way I learned. I chose to practise as I sat with my mum on a weekend afternoon, we watched TV, drank tea, and ate biscuits as we chatted and i was sewing. My mum was even able to give me some tips as I worked.

You can very clearly see me experiment with the thickness of the thread and learn how to work with things like curves and odd shapes.

It was at this point I felt comfortable enough to begin working on more polished and theme-based pieces.

[nicolecon-divergentpractice]

for this project I was very set on hitting the ground running with the making in this project so that’s exactly what I’ve chosen to do but first I think I have to set the scene with the work I’ve been doing over the summer.

throughout the break I focused a lot on continuing to think, read, and consume even when I wasn’t actively making art. one of the things I chose to consume was feminist art theory books, my main focus being a book titled ‘Art Monsters’ by Lauren Elkin. In this book Elkin talks a lot about female bodies throughout art history and how we got to where we are today. reading so much feminist theory and consuming a lot of horror movies I thought a lot about the words we use when describing feminist ideas, particularly the idea of women being an object of desire and consumption for men.

as a continuation of my previous work focusing on the semiotics and iconography of women in art, more specifically the use of fruits (pomegranate) to represent women I chose to dive into cannibalistic and gorey imagery for this project as a whole.

in terms of “divergence” between this class and creative enquiry, I’ve chose to differentiate the two bodies of work by ways of working. while the work for creative enquiry will be focusing on the imagery itself through means of painting, drawing, and printmaking. this project will take form with hand sewing and fabric work.

some really prominent artists I’ll be looking at throughout include people like Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, and Sheila Hicks.

I also created a “mood board” of sorts for this project to help with inspiration.

this mood board is shared with ‘creative enquiry’ so not all of the work is textile based but the ideas and theory behind it and visuals are still really inspiring to me.