Nick Landon BA (Hons) Three Dimensional Design
This project came into fruition from a desire to innovate the way we consume clothes. I intended the end garment to be a product to appreciate not just consume, challenging the capacity of garments in their ability to belong in galleries, not just catwalks.
Normally a symbol of life, the breath has become a potentially life threatening hazard to others due to COVID-19. The ‘Breath Triptych’ has used the breath as a theme and a tool to scorch silica cloth, echoing the trauma the fabric has undergone as the hot glass has been blown into the moulds. The works aim to embody human fragility and global suffering as a result of the pandemic.
The nine pieces of silica cloth that form three moulds are parts of a worker jacket pattern. The ‘Burn Jacket’ is an archetypal of a worker jacket descended from a utilitarian purpose; an object that historically was built for wear and tear, that would have contained rips and burn marks, material memories. The narrative is embedded into the silica cloth and then scanned and reprinted in canvas, the print was created whilst the cloth was thermally destroyed, a material scar as a result of the breath.
Addressing a cultural virus of mass consumption, the off-cuts from the ‘Burn Jacket’ were sewn together to make moulds. These pieces use two abundant man-made materials, glass and concrete with the glass pieces inserted into the concrete like a virus attacking a cell. The mirrored glass aims to put the viewer's reflection amongst these concrete casts of negative space to remind them of the virus of mass consumption as a result of materialism. The cheap concrete occupies the maximum amount of space within the fabric mould, embodying the business model of fast fashion: selling cheap material at high volumes.
