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Cultural Shifts |
'just a little footnote to show how the mail order emotions are all packed and ready!!
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Emotional Copes |
As a rule I don't generally put my medical work on this blog as I don't want to scare off the unwary! However it has been taking up a lot of headspace and so rather than neglect things over here I will share some technical details from my most recent piece for Imperial College, 'SomeBody'.
The work here is from a medical model which is being performed for young people in an anti knife crime initiative.The basis for the visuals is as ever historical and contemporary textile techniques used as metaphors for the anatomy.
Buttonholes become stab wounds, rouleaux loops become blood vessels, 18th century frills are muscles, silk purses become digestive organs and origami becomes heart and lungs.
There is a series over on the Thread Management blog (linked in the side bar) featuring it in more detail.
Paul Craddock has just published his book "Spare Parts: A Surprising History of Transplants". His extensive research into the history of the techniques of surgery found us both examining antique embroideries at the V&A museum and later led to filming me stitching cigarette paper.
In the film clip above Paul discusses what is was all about.
and now you can buy the book!
'Go Out Don't Go Out'. Cultural Shift no.5.
The last of the little mail order shifts looks at the chaos surrounding retail and lockdown restrictions. It features an embroidered Google map of central London, 'temporarily closed' shop signs and a market stall of masks made from internet memes, tweets and cultural images. The words embroidered across the top reflect the reaction of Londoners to being berated by the PM during the summer of 2020 for not going back to work.
'LIV. A Nightingale Sang in Barclay's Square', cultural shift 4.
Money and the NHS....homemade scrubs and inadequate PPE.....hospitals being built to impress but only treating fifty four patients....pockets and mass produced clothing....
This delicate paper silk shift is 'Not in Public'.
In removing touch from my life social distancing has also removed inappropriate touch from my life. Men can no longer try and touch me on the train or in social situations, they have to keep their distance. Many women will have felt relief from this persistent menace but many will also have been subjected to increased abuse in private.
This shift began as an outfit to wear in the supermarket with spikes all over. As I layered the spikes down the front I realised that they also looked like medieval 'breast bags', a breast supporting modification to shifts which is still apparent in the traditional clothing of women in southern India.
I spread embroidered spikes along the hem and sleeves with 'keep-out' symbols on the sides.
This shift has the additional accessory of a double sided mask-mirror, one side with an embroidered black eye....
...the other with a brave pouty lipstick mouth
All the shifts have extra long sleeves to give them, if scaled up, a span of two meters and this one has that embroidered onto paper labels on each cuff. I was horrified at how quickly large corporations were trying to sell themselves as our friends at the start of the pandemic whilst profiting from their advantage over small businesses, I felt that they were feeding on us as we sat at home helpless.
You may notice the buff and black signature colouring of this red-edged linen shift with it's smiling vampire logo. The same entomology pins as before hold the mantra in place.
A new piece, finished yesterday, and the most challenging yet. I have been pondering how to tackle a fragmenting leaf structure for ...