In March 2006, I exhibited a group of experimental garment objects in Well-Fashioned: Eco Style in the UK at the Crafts Council in London. Curated by Professor Rebecca Earley, the exhibition brought together artists, designers and fashion labels exploring new approaches to sustainable fashion, materials and production.
For me, it was an important early invitation to exhibit beyond the Royal College of Art and the British Council’s RCA Highlights touring exhibition. It also marked the beginning of my involvement in a developing research community concerned with the environmental consequences of textile production and the possibilities of extending material life.
The works I exhibited grew directly out of my doctoral research at the Royal College of Art, where I had been investigating ways of transforming plastics through processes associated with textiles and print. I was interested in what happened when an industrial material, usually valued for its convenience and disposability, was treated instead as a surface capable of carrying colour, pattern, texture and artistic meaning.
Giving Plastic Another Life
My research began with a fascination for plastics as both materials and cultural objects. They offered extraordinary possibilities for colour, transparency, flexibility and surface manipulation, yet their association with mass production and disposability presented an increasingly urgent contradiction.
I wanted to explore how these materials might acquire different qualities and meanings through artistic intervention. Printing, embossing, flocking and other textile processes allowed me to work with plastic in ways that challenged its conventional appearance and use.
The garment objects I made for Well-Fashioned brought this investigation into the language of clothing. Rather than approaching fashion solely through the production of new garments, I was interested in the material itself: its existing life, its capacity for transformation and the possibility of creating something that people might value and retain.
These questions would continue through my later work with recycled polythene, printed cloth and the Billboard Skirts. At the time, however, Well-Fashioned offered an opportunity to place them within a wider conversation about the environmental responsibilities of artists and designers.
An Emerging Research Community
My invitation came through Rebecca Earley, whom I had met through my Royal College of Art colleague Jane Harris. Jane was involved in developing new directions for fashion and textiles research at Central Saint Martins, and Rebecca was establishing an approach to sustainable textile design that brought together experimental practice, research and education.
This was an exciting moment. Environmental thinking was beginning to move beyond the selection of supposedly better materials towards a more searching examination of how things were designed, made, consumed, valued and discarded.
My doctoral work on plastics and extended material life found a natural place within these discussions. I brought an artist’s perspective to questions that were also being explored by fashion designers, textile researchers and sustainability specialists.
What I remember most clearly is the sense of entering a new community of enquiry. The conversations were not confined to a single discipline. They moved between material science, industrial production, fashion, craft, environmental responsibility and the cultural meanings attached to objects.
Beyond the Finished Garment
Well-Fashioned brought together a wide range of approaches to sustainable fashion, from experimental materials and garment construction to new business models and alternatives to conventional production.
Among the participating artists and designers were Benjamin Shine, Alison Willoughby, Gracie Burnett, Edson Raupp, Kate Fletcher, Kate Goldsworthy, Rebecca Earley, Barbara Lee and Helen Amy Murray. Fashion labels and initiatives included Ciel, Enamore, Howies, Junky Styling, Beyond Skin, Keep & Share, Terra Plana and Worn Again.
I was particularly interested in the exhibition’s breadth. Sustainability was not presented as a single aesthetic or technique. It could involve reconsidering materials, transforming existing objects, changing production methods or questioning the assumptions that made fashion so dependent on novelty.
My own contribution approached these questions through surface and material transformation. I was less concerned with proposing a new fashion collection than with investigating how an existing material might be given another identity and another life.
In this sense, the garment objects were also part of my developing painting practice. They allowed colour, pattern and image to move beyond paper or canvas and onto flexible materials associated with the body.
Materials, Value and Continuance
Looking back, I see Well-Fashioned as an early public expression of questions that have continued throughout my work.
Where do materials go when we no longer want them? What makes an object worth keeping? And can artistic intervention alter not only the appearance of a material, but also our relationship with it?
These questions led me towards the Billboard Skirts, in which discarded polythene and second-hand denim became the supports for printed images exploring consumer culture, fashion and desire. They also informed my later interest in the material histories carried by paintings, tapestries and installations.
The exhibition was significant for another reason. It introduced me to a community of artists, designers and researchers whose work challenged the separation of artistic experimentation from environmental and social responsibility.
I have come to understand that relationship as one of the enduring threads of my practice. Materials are never simply neutral substances waiting to receive an image. They arrive with histories of manufacture, labour, use, desire and disposal.
Well-Fashioned gave those concerns a public setting at a formative moment in my career. It was the beginning of a conversation that would continue through my artistic practice, teaching and curatorial work for many years.
Exhibition
Well-Fashioned: Eco Style in the UK
Crafts Council, London
22 March – 4 June 2006
Curator: Professor Rebecca Earley
Works exhibited: Experimental garment objects developed using specialist plastic printing and surface processes originating in my doctoral research at the Royal College of Art.