Exhibition

We had to come in during the holidays to start putting the boards up, and cleaning them: filling them in, sanding them down and painting them.

We were then given our exhibition spaces. To start with, I was given a space near a window, that was nearly the whole length of a wall. I tried to make it work with what I was trying to do, but it wasn't. I had to switch places. I was then given a corner/booth which was a lot better, and I knew I would be able to get the most out of my work with it.

I started experimenting with Danielle about how to go about putting my scares up. We got a piece of dowling which is a piece of circular wood, almost like a pole. We put that across the edges where the 2 boards met, and hung the scarves over. One of the problems was that the scarves were 3 meters long and the boards weren't. A lot of the scarf had to be folded over, and I didn't see the point in doing it this way as there was then no point in making them so long. A solution to this problem was to get a longer piece of dowling, and put it across the light fittings, so the fabric was not touching the floor. I thought this was a good idea, but the closest thing we had to dowling in college were these bright red poles that slotted into each other to become longer. 

I then painted all the pieces white after slotting them together and making them as long I wanted them to be. 

As one of the pieces that I used was wood, it had been painted horribly, and there were a lot of staples stuck in it. I didn't want my scarves to get caught on these, so I pulled them out and re painted the piece. 

Also, I didn't want to just throw the scarves over poles, I wanted the whole scarf to be visible, and one solution to this problem was to create a channel for the poles to go through which meant folding over the top piece of the scarves and sewing it, creating a loop, so they could then be threaded through the poles, and wouldn't fall off. 

When I had been playing around with the position of the scarves, I had originally wanted to put the screen printed muslin scarf in the middle. I wanted the scarves to be in a staggered layered composition, so that they would all be visible, but one thing was that I didn't have enough space, and another thing was that next to the devore scarves, the screen printed muslin one felt and looked out of place, almost like it didn't belong there, so I decided to put the thin devore scarf where the screen printed one was supposed to go - at the back and in the middle, and the velvet devore scarves in front on either side.

The missing element was a light, as you couldn't see the design, and once that was installed, it was starting to come together.

I still had the other 2 pieces left to put up - the screen printed muslin one and the backing piece that I had sewn into. One way of putting these up was to pin and drape then on mannequins. That had been what I had wanted to do at the start of the year. I was going to drape one traditionally, and one in a creative new style that I was yet to create, as a part of my proposal and what I wanted to do was explore my culture and heritage, and make it contemporary. This was one way of doing that.

I didn't want to leave the mannequin bare, so cut out a template for a blouse as this is what would have been worn with a sari. I didn't have the time to sew this all together, so decided that it would just be a fashion installation - both of them. I pinned the front and back together, making it appear as the mannequin had been dressed. 

I then had to pin on an underskirt to make it a full length skirt. This needed pleating and pinning, which took time as I had to do that all the way round.

The hardest part of this as I had never done this before was to pin the top scarf correctly. That also needed to to pinned and pleated in certain places, and this sure took a while, but I got there. It needed ironing first. 

It was then onto the next. As I had draped the above in the traditional way, I wanted to drape the second one differently. Instead of having an underskirt, I thought of just pinning fabric that is pleated onto the skirt and wrapping the scarf on top. So, to make it easier to pin the pleats, I ironed the fabric into pleats before pinning it.

I didn't sew any of this either, and this was also an installation piece. I had two pieces of fabric, one for the front and one for the back. 

Again, the hard part was deciding how to drape the scarf without making it look traditional.

I finally decided to make a sort of flower at the shoulder and pin that in place, and as there was a gap between the pinned skirt and the blouse, I decided to pin the scarf in place there as it would cover this up, and it was a new way to wear the sari, making it contemporary by having it wrapped around the waist and then draped over the shoulder.

I wasn't sure where to place the mannequins when I had finished with them, and as I had a floor light that was lighting up my devore scarves, it needed covering and also to bring the whole exhibition together, I placed them in front of the scarves that were hung up. It gave the exhibition a finished appearance.

I feel the mannequins in front of the scarves with the light in the background brings the whole thing together. I feel I have explored what I set out to do, I wanted to explore my culture and heritage, and I feel I have done that by making a connection through food, even though this was not intentional, it shows where research and experimentation can lead you, from what you thought you were originally going to do. I realised that I didn't need the digital print after all the trouble that I went through for it. My exhibition felt complete to me without it, and if I was to still go ahead and print it, I wouldn't know where to put it, and how to present it. 

I also created some tiles and framed some prints to sell in the exhibition shop, which I also think turned out really well. 

These are the tiles that I made. I also framed some of the Photoshop edits that I created. I only did 3 as I didn't know how many and if at all they would sell.