First few days of Unit X...

Week 1, 11th March 2013, Unit X 'Unconference': Absent. But all for good reasons... 

Me and a few others from College 3 (Grace Sindall, Hannah Sulek and Elnaz Yazdani) spent the first three days of Unit X down in Greenwich, London helping out the fantastic Alice Kettle install her latest exhibition at the Queens House, part of the National Maritime Museums. 

This was a fantastic opportunity to help out such a renown textile artist. Even though in my current practice I'm moving further away from using actual textile 'stuff', I find it really interesting how she uses something that can often be referred to as a craft at such a huge scale which makes her an important figure in the contemporary Fine Art world as well as the Arts and Crafts market.

Alice talked about how she really wanted to involve schools and creative establishments around the country  to create her artwork, as many of the flowers in the room The Garden of England (selected portraits, an elaborately stitched representational portrait and stitched floor-piece exploring the idea of 'The Garden of England') have been submitted by universities, and the Flower Helix (constructed wire and lace sculpture) on the Tulip Stairs, was an idea communicated through Facebook calling to schools to help create stitched pieces resembling Queens Lace. 

I love the concept of the exhibition and she mentioned how she believes that craft has the ability to bring people together, even in the current economic climate; the fact that its such a collaborative piece gives it another dimension. We loved being immersed in such a historical place and think it’s great that contemporary artwork can be beautiful as well as having such an interesting historical element to it. 

3 very busy days: sewing, arranging, problem solving and mainly assembling the Flower Helix, which is placed within the Tulip Spiral Staircase. It was great to have our own input to the piece, and we also felt the stress when it came to fixing the piece into the staircase- like it was our own piece of artwork! 

I found it very inspiring, It was great to meet the people who worked at the museum, and found it was interesting how the gallery staff  were so excited and intrigued at the prospect of such a contemporary piece being installed into the building. Most importantly, It was very insightful into the workings of installing and exhibiting such high profile artwork in such a traditional institution, the communication between artist and museum staff and the constant consideration of the effect of the artwork on future visitors of the building...