Above Ground: Post-Consumerism and the Designer-Maker

Abstract

I want to present my practice mainly by having textile manifestations passed among participants to be
manipulated and have more human energy & debris added to them, whilst talking about it and its contexts. We
will engage in a close examination of materials selection and how this impacts on the outcome; the process is
examined with a transfer of handwork techniques using traditional tools – the blade and the hook – learning
some post-apocalyptic life skills.

The predicament I am trying to address is essentially about waste, of resources both human and material in
textiles.

As an artist my works are intrinsically useless; as a craftsperson using eons old techniques, I am ultimately a
designer inasmuch as I make the most out of what is presented to me within my sustainable practice. My works
are interactive textile sculptures exploring our relationship to inside with outside and the effect of the villus
surface for communicating emotions. Using only pre-owned, mass produced knitwear and hand tools in a
process of creation that is an undoing of the industry of fast-fashion; each cut and stitch honouring the resources
both human and material. The works pursue themes examined throughout my Degree studies for which I gained
a 1st Class Honours.

In the wider context if my practice continues it will naturally require an alternative economic model if it is to
survive ethically, continuing to challenge the hegemony of market forces and global capitalism that have become
normal in my lifetime. I look to you as a post-consumer for inspiration. With the advent of peak-oil there will be
limits to a spatial fix for our discards and we will have to take personal responsibility – so let’s have some fun,
else the guilt will drive us mad.

My practice is materials led in the first instance and secondly by process, the outcomes are related to humanity
by the familiar sphere, the dialogue of inside/outside and by scale. The making process uses no other resources
except time, thus I re-use the textiles rather than recycle or upcycle. It is a slow process that utilises the products
of very fast, prolific machines, creating materials by an industrial process that cannot be done on a small scale; I
painstakingly unravel stuff that was created in haste.

Although the materials are sourced locally they are produced globally – intercepted at a crisis point in their
lifecycle, not for aesthetics but to re-route them from the linear cowboy economic model (take, make, use,
discard) and offer them some redemption as they are maladapted for the circular spaceship economic model
(take, make, use, recycle). My intention is not to cherry pick to create beautiful, elegant work from the discarded
or dismissed, it is to manifest the depression of a post-modern conscience. Using materials with lives tediously
lived, the works reveal a narrative of pointless consumption; a history personal to the original object that is
imbued and informed by the global fast-fashion as described by Andrew Brooks in his 2015 book Clothing
Poverty (Zed Books London).