Early Works
1999 – 2003
While studying womenswear fashion, I began experimenting with one-piece pattern cutting (making clothes from a single piece of fabric). Initially, I was interested to see how conventional items such as shirts and trousers could be made by eliminating seams, yet still have shape. This approach lead to more sculptural works, where the end results rarely related to anything conventional or wearable.
During my Master’s degree at Central St Martins in 2001, I continued these ideas and realised my interest in using fabric for sculpture overshadowed my interest in creating wearable clothing and fashion, and I began developing works off the body, as artworks. In 2003, my first exhibition, Harmonic Dynamics, presented a series of works that represented this initial first step in working with fabric as stand-alone designs and sculptures. Ideas for abstract compositions, surface texture, material combinations and the potential to ‘paint with fabric’, opened up various new avenues to explore.
Interplay
2002
The approach behind these works considers ‘the painting’ as a physical form of components, namely, the canvas, the frame and the wall – and how these parts alone can inform three dimensional, sculptural compositions.
Interplay Series #1, #2 and #3
Sewn wool felt and painted wood frame
120cm x 120cm x 15cm
Re-Form
2003
The idea of providing the viewer with the opportunity to ‘change’ the composition of an artwork according to preference: Playing with the contrast in material, a stainless steel panel initially acts to frame the red wool canvas – though the viewer can adjust the series of zips, exposing the shiny steel details to create unique compositions.
Red wool with adjustable zips on and through stainless steel 55cm x 165cm.
Unity Series
2003
The idea of using only the component parts of a ‘painting’: namely the canvas fabric, the frame and the wall, to design a visual composition within the three-dimensional space of ‘a painting’.
The stainless steel frame doubles as a structural element through which the sewn and cut felt is suspended via laser cut slits. The wall becomes a part of the composition via the cut section in the canvas causing the artwork to be come intrinsically linked to its environment.
Exhibited and sold through Ligne Roset.
Square: 120cm x 120cm
Horizontal: 70cm x 160cm
Woven Works
2003
These works explore using fabric to weave graphic, bold, up-scaled textual stitch motifs and designs. Solid materials such as wood, glass, steel and marble provide contrasting hard surfaces through which the fabric is woven, to create mixed media abstract and figurative works.
From the Surface
This simple piece represents the idea of ‘painting with fabric’, whereby the physical line provides dimension and the ability to extend beyond the boundary of the ’canvas’. This piece led to the eyelet technique and the children’s creative activity ‘Cordz’.
70 x 50 x 7cm
Silk woven through glasss
Across
This stitched line leaves one canvas and continue into another to create this mixed media dimensional design.
60 x 180 x 10cm
Leather and Suede woven through marble
Uplift
This large scale embroidery explored the combination of steel in two forms to generate a subtle textual figurative relief.
60 x 120 x 10cm
Organza woven through stainless steel
Sewn Sculpture
This piece continued the one-piece cutting ideas developed from the ‘Realised’ collection where curving lines and tailored construction created clean, structured sculptural forms.
This concept became more about sculpture than wearable clothing – and this later lead to developing fabric works away from the body, free standing or exhibited on a wall.
Recurving Top
Wool
Shirt Series
Sewn artist canvas
45cm x 55cm
Realised
Graduate Collection
2020
In 2000, there was a genuine feeling of optimism, hope and change in the wake of entering a new millennium – the desire for something new.
Notions of change, outgrowing and the challenges presented when one realises their environment is no longer right for them – divorcing ones-self from ones surroundings – was the underlying concept behind the collection.
The idea was to present an alternative approach to cutting clothes. The collection explored entrapment and emergence through one-piece pattern cutting, with the body becoming less restricted and increasingly exposed through the sequence of clothes presented.
