The departmental phonebox

Now that Whitireia Polytech has fancy phones linked to computers, the art department is a bit short of phones. I suppose everyone has cellphones these days.

We did a class with Gabby O'Connor. Have a look at her website, she does big sculptures with tissue paper.
The brief was to interfere with a space by making an installation, we had about 2 hours. Our group made a phone box.

I might have to go and take some more photos today as these don't really show the shape very well. It is a red wool old fashioned English phonebox with cone phone and vandalised phone books.

Watermark day 5

 Here is todays wallhanging. It is Zealandia - Karori Sanctuary in Wellington. It is a fenced sanctuary for native birds and has a big predator-proof fence.

 I chose the traditional blue like the willow plate but couldn't resist adding a bit of pink which turned purple.

 This is a final shot of the whole gallery with all 5 dripping dyed wallhangings. No. 1 and no.5 look as if they are  similar colours in this photo but they are quite different blues in real life.

Thats it folks - the show is over. I'd like to thank Clare Plug , Ian Smith, James Wratt, Margery Smith, David Wratt, Chris Wratt, Pheobe and Nina Smith, Deb Donnelly, Peter Deckers, Viv Atkinson and all the staff at the Visual Arts department of Whitireia Polytechnic for their help with this exhibition, I couldn't have done it without you!

Tomorrow- images of the shadows formed on the walls behind the hangings, incidental details, hopefully images of the fabric which mopped up the dye at the bottom (rolled up in the guttering).

Watermark exhibition Day 1

This is the first wall-hanging before the dye starts to drip. The central image is Pauatahanui Inlet near Porirua, New Zealand. The building is a bird watching hide and the estuary/inlet is a haven for all sorts of waterbirds. The outside patterns are from the willow pattern plate.

Here is my artist statement for the exhibition.

Watermark

 The inspiration for this exhibition came from a quote.

“The Chinese textile industry creates about 3 billion tons of soot each year, and a single mill can use about 200 tons of water for each ton of fabric it dyes. Millions of tons of unused fabric are burned or sent to landfills each year when dyed the wrong colour. Rivers run red or chartreuse, or teal, depending on what colour is in fashion that season – with untreated toxic dyes washing off from mills.” (Menon, 2010).

Dye pollution occurs in many textile-producing countries.  Western consumers demand lower and lower prices for clothing forcing manufacturers to cut corners to save money. Water treatment processes are expensive. Meanwhile New Zealand remains ‘clean and green’ and the pollution happens somewhere else, ‘out of sight, out of mind’.

Would we put up with our rivers turning pink or teal or scarlet according to fashion?  Probably not.  Instead our waterways are contaminated with invisible pollutants.  Nutrients from farm fertilisers, heavy metals in storm water and high bacteria levels from dairy farming.

Not so clean and green after all. 

And now for the exciting bit - when the dye starts to run. The colours for today - Delft Blue and pink.

Apologies for the photo colours - I will re-work some of them in photoshop. I can't quite work out how to change the white balance to deal with halogens (no setting on my camera).

This has been an exciting dyeing day, and I didn't get any on the carpet - honest!

Please leave a comment so I know you are there.
Clare

Watermark Exhibition

Here is a flyer for my exhibition. It took me at least 3 times as long to make the flyer/invitation as it does to make one of the exhibits.  However that included getting help with photoshop (thankyou Moses) and dealing with Adobe via livechat to try and register Creative suite when mine came with no 'coupon code'. Then I lost the final copy when I lost a memory stick (it may have gone up the vaccum cleaner but I did look there :-) and now I have a temperature and just want to go to sleep.

I was going to put the poster of all the other students shows next but it must be too small a file and came out all pixelated. There are two shows currently on in Wellington.

Meike de Court and Camille Walton have 2 separate exhibitions at Matchstick Gallery in Cuba St (above Spacesuit)


Keri-Mae Zagrobelna has a show at Thistle Hall in Cuba st.

All three shows are contemporary jewellery and are on from 26th June - 1st July

Now I just need to shake off a lurking cold and make one and a half more wallhangings for my exhibition. Luckily the 2 week break starts tomorrow.

C