Throughout this part I have explored packaging, in particular cardboard packaging that contains food. For this Assignment I have decided to look at what we as humans package ourselves in; Clothes.
Historically we have never been in a position in society until now that as a population we individually own so many clothes. On a basic level, this has come about through industrialization and the ability to manufacture fabrics in an increasingly mechanised way with an increased planitary population, all of whom need clothes and jobs. Thus the clothing manufacturing industry along with cheap labour, often in the developing world, has, fuelled by constantly changing FASHION, we find ourselves in a world abundant with clothing.
I feel strongly that we will have to change the way we view, buy, manufacture and wear our clothing in the future. We need to be much more environmentally aware of how our clothes are made, from what? How much we reuse and up-cycle our clothing and move away from cheap disposable clothing that washes billions of micro-plastics into the environment.
With this in mind I reached into my attic to retreive a collection I have made over many years of clothing tags that I have kept from al the clothes that I have bought over years. I found that I had an embrassing amount of tags. I have had it in mind from the commencement of the collection that I would do an artpiece with, with just a hazy picture in mind of what that might be, this assignment gave me the opportunity to explore doing something with them.
I have been joining some weekly Life Drawing sessions which are primarilarly single poses for the 2 hour duration of the session. I do tend to photograph the pose so that I have reference for later finishing. It was this pose that the model took (She was leaning against her bed) that my composition came to me.
Considering that clothing tags are a particular size, I realised early that I would have to work big to make the composition work. I ordered a piece of canvas that was 2m x 1.80m and used the commando strips to attach it to the wall. I then painted a coat of gesso over it. The weight of the paint caused the commando strips to fail, and in a galiant effort not to gety paint all over me (Wearing black clothing) and my carpet, I nailed it to the wall in a panic, which actually worked a treat!
Once this was dry I then roughed out the position ofthe figure on the canvas with a 6B stick of graphite. I realised that I needed to create a sence of space and depth so I drew on the exercises to consider how I might depict the different areas of the image. The figure is white and drawn in graphite to express the nudity that we all bear when not clothed. The sense of empty space that this creates is really reflective of the nakedness of each and every one of us, and I feel is more powerful than if I had painted her in colour.
I had just completed collaged the background; mainly with brown paper, but with the addition of a few images from my collection of Newspaper images. The ‘Power Failure’ suggests the failure of us to control the power of fashion and capitalist drive to make fortunes out of it. The ‘Union Jack’ is actually mad up out of pills which also allys to our addiction to fast fashion and finally, the Facebook symbol reflected in the all-seeing eye of social media, the woman tied to the ball and chain is just a crying shame!
I thought long and hard about the best way to make a pile of clothes. I drew on some of my research for this part and, as I had made some masks last year, I fortunately had some material; some bright colours and black that I could use. The shops are all still closed in Lockdown so I could not go the fabric shop!
Attaching the fabric with Blu-Tac was not going to work, so I had to consider an alternative metrhod of attachment. I was low on PVA glue and did not really want to glue the fabric as it would seep through. I really wanted the fabric to look like clothes, so I decided to sew hems and edges on the shapes. I also dissected a few pairs of leggings that provided me with more black or some patterns. I chose a pair that had words printed on it ‘Love’ and ‘fashion’ which I tried to place strategically so that the words were readable.
Phyllida Barlow 
Robert Rauschenberg_biography 
Phyllida Barlow
I realised that I was not going to be able to sew the pieces directly to the canvas, so I dug a piece of Calico out that I drew the shape ot the pile of clothes onto and cut out with an additional border. I then stitched lots of pieces of fabric together on the sewing machine creating puckers, folds, layers, flaps and drapes on the shape of the pile.
It too about a day to stitch the fabric together over the two main sectiond that were to sit either side of the figure, offering up my creation over the pattern often to ensure that it was going to end up in the right shape and with the right balance of black and colour incidence. I then stitched the clothing pile to the calico, all with the sewing machine at this stage.
The next stage was to affix the clothing pile to the gesso’d canvas, which was now tough to get a needle through. I had to hand stitch the calico carefully into place around the line of the body. This I did while the artwork was still hanging on the wall, just going behind it to pass the needle through. This took another day. It was still a bit baggy at this stage, but I knew this would be resolved when I stitched the labels to it.
Once I had stitched the two main piles, I realised that I would need to stitch a few bits of fabric above her arms to make the pile a bit bigger, I felt that she would sit in the space better liker this. The next stage was to lay out all the labels and select the ones that I wanted to affix to the artwork. I tried to select the ones that I liked, had a particular graphic on it such as ‘SALE’, or was a colour that stood out well in a particular location. All these wer hand stitched in place, sometimes pinching up the fabric to have it hang in a more pleasing way.
At this point I drew in the body in more detail, careful not to go too dark, as the fact that she is white stands out well against the fabric. This gave the figure more depth and detail.
Once all the labels were stitched on, some also sticking out of the pile to break up the outline, I then painted in the ground and the hair in oil paint, I felt that acrylic might crack when dry on the flexible canvas. I feel the distinctly different materials; Paint. collage, graphite, fabric and tags work well together, they each tell a part of the story, and your eye is drawn throughout the sceneas it examines the detail, whilst a strong directional line is present through the composition in the form of the figure. There is some dead space in the foreground that I have populated with bags that the clothes might have come in, enhancing the story of clothing aquisition that I am telling in my artwork.
The final addition to the piece is the piece of clothing with the Criminal Damage label, this I felt very apt for this piece. When I was first sketching the figure out, I realised that It would be more interesting compositionally if the figure were looking at a particular item of clothing, the Criminal Damage leggins were perfect as they also had graphic icons of popular culture. I formed the hand and head position so that they linked and stitched the fabric and label as the final piece of the story.
I also envisioned that I would place some fashion bags on the foreground, however when I offered them up, they were too over-powering. Instead I optioned to stitch an array of additional labels scattered about the floor area, this is gentler on the eye and has a better balance with the image overall. The image is nailed to the wall in the room I was working in, and thus difficult to move or light properly. It is also not stretched as I had to get behind it to stitch the items on. For these reasons the 2m x 2m canvas warps a bit and causes the graphite pencil marks to catch the light oddly and make it hard to see the shading properly, especially on the face. I would like to look at it again in a different light and stretched in the future.
Too Many Clothes!
Niki Gibbs
27 February 2021
Niki Blue Sunflower OCA Studio Practice 