21st April- Processions Workshop

21st April- Processions Workshop

Today was the second session of meeting for Processions. This time there were 4 new members to the group. Including an age range and more fine art background participants. This is exciting as it allows the project to become even more of a collaborative effort. What is interesting about that to me is that people will come and go week by week and have differing influences depending on their involvement and session participation. Therefore there will be influences from individuals that only briefly worked with as as well as individuals that have been there through every stage. In today’s session we discussed ideas we had regarding the t- shirt design and the banner itself. I proposed my ideas and they were received really well by the group. The slogans I had come up with have now become the final design for the t-shirts. ‘We stand in solidarity 1848-2018’ will be the front and ‘still standing’ will be the back. I feel so overwhelmingly happy that my slogans and concept was chosen for the t-shirt as this further ties into my current investigation regarding wearable art and wearable ‘protest’. However these t-shirts will be multiples adding a differing dimension as they are possible less considered and individual. The concept of the multiple ties in here and the mechanical reproduction being both valuable and causing modern devaluation of the art object. The t-shirt design got decided fairly quickly leading us into consideration for the final banner. We designed collectively and the idea of a two layer banner emerged. The slashed front being a metaphor for the slashing of the concept of ‘purity’ while also mimicking the action of a suffragette slashing famous paintings in a gallery. The thin front layer will have imagery and text printed on it which remembers the stigma that the woman’s movement has suffered along with derogatory imagery and phrases used. This will contain both modern and past examples. We have to stick to the suffragettes colours of purple, green white and black. Therefore we decided that the back banner will be fairly simple. In my research I found a list of countries where woman either can’t vote or struggle to vote. I suggested therefore that we use a swatch of material from those countries to represent them and stand in solidarity. We talked though ideas of how this might fabricate. I suggested that the material gets tied around the poles that we use to carry the work as these are just as vital to the process as the banner and slogans. It’s the holistic consideration that implements the fact we are not marching solely fro the past or for ourselves. We later developed the idea to embroider the patterns internally in the lettering of the back banner. This therefore allows the craft element which the local textiles artist was eager to incorporate. Fiona, the textiles artist will therefore give us classes in embroidery which I am very excited for and will further my skill set. We have each gone away with the task of researching patterns or symbolism for a chosen country. I am doing Kenya as my sister has visited many times and has material from that countries. I think this is therefore a primary way to gather the research and will be more reliable and genuine than online work. We are also each finding something to have printed on the thin over layer to represent what we are trying to eradicate/the past stigma that now seems so outdated. These two things together are interesting as they investigate the text/image relationship while also reaching into the development of past ironies and modern examples of the same ignorance. The next time we meet is next week at woman of the world festival at open where we will be doing screen printing and talking to the public about the project.