Upslide: Final Evaluation.
This term we had to choose between a collection of projects titled ‘International Projects’. I chose Upslide. The project is based on a slide collection that went missing after the old Emma Phipps building was put out of business. In our first session, we were given a small tour of the surrounding areas of the Emma Phipps building and were given information in a treasure hunt style. We then had a week to research and start our making.
I started looking into memories and how they fade away over time. I found it interesting how the building itself had been forgotten and was curious to investigate forgetfulness. However, this sent me down a confusing spiral. I researched many diseases and injury’s that cause people to forget but could not find a place to start making and when I did make things I did not find them successful. So, I decided to focus on the building itself and making work from that without any set idea to see if I liked the work and if I could find one thing to focus on. I ended up taking a liking to digitally editing photographs of the building. I thought these images were a lot more successful than my other ones and I think that’s because I was not restricting myself to one intention. Several students had pointed out that my work reminded them of old tv’s and the static you used to get from them, so I decided to experiment with them more and my work began to develop into a direct response to the building instead of the slide collection. I stuck with these images and began making them into a fabric and printing them. I printed them with an acrylic etch first but found those prints unsuccessful because they were not as precise as I would have liked so I switched to screen printing as the images came out clearly with this method.
Once I began creating my fabric I began to enjoy the process of screen printing more than I expected too. I had not done it up until this moment, so I expected it to be confusing and difficult, but I found it quite simple. It’s time-consuming but I got the results I wanted when using this method and I enjoyed my making whilst using this method. I think my final work was a success. Comparing it to the piece I presented in the show which was a long piece of fabric with bright colours on it, the final piece of fabric made a lot more sense. The bright colours used on my showpiece had no explanation, I used them purely to experiment and because I liked the colours. Whilst in my final piece I used gritty, dark colours as that links in with the gritty style of the building. I also added more stains to the fabric this time as I wanted the piece to look like it had been stepped on and badly treated as this made sense to the project. Overall these decisions made the final piece of fabric much more successful.