The Duchess

I am currently working on my end of the project and for this I have choosen to do something completely different to my previous work. I am basing my project on the 18th century Duchess of Devonshire Georgiana Cavendish. I seen the film 'The Duchess' which stars Keira Knightley and is based on a true story.

The basic story of  The Duchess of Devonshire she was a celebrated beauty and socialite who gathered around her a large circle Salon of literary and political figures. She was also an active political campaigner in an age when women's suffrage was still over a century away. She is famous not only for her marital arrangements, her catastrophic affairs, her beauty and sense of style and best clothes, and her political campaigning, but also for her love of gambling.Georgiana married the Duke of Devonshire but he did not love her and began a realtionship with a friend of Georgianas friend Lady Elizabeth Foster to whom betrayed the Duchess by doing so. The Duchess then fell in love with Charles Grey who was in the running to being prime minister of the UK at the time. His affair with the Duchess herself an active political campaigner, did him little harm although it nearly caused her to be divorced by her husband.She had a number of miscarriages before giving birth to four children: three with her husband, and an illegitimate daughter fathered by the Charles Grey . Below pictures in order The Duke of Devonshire, Lady Elizabeth Foster and Charles Grey.

I love all the fashion back in those days beauitful dresses, head pieces, style as I would not have the time to create a dress, I have decided to create a cape!! And because I find the story of the Duchess's Life interesting I am going to create the cape around the story of  life by making a silhouette of her and The Duke, Elizabeth and Grey, Grey will be facing the Duchess, the duke will be facing Lady Foster, Lady Foster will have her back to the Duchess and a sign of her betrayal. There silhousettes will be made up of small pieces of fabric, Using symbolism the meanings of colours for example red symbolises love, I will use the different coloured fabric to protray how the Duchess felt for each person/silhouette.  

Christmas Craft Fair

As I am in my final year of completing my HND in Fibre Art and Textile design, like many years before me we have an end of the year show! This is very exciting for me and a lot of my friends/class mates as it will be our first time to have an end of the year show, a chance to show of all the hard work we have done over the last 2years and for our friends and family to come an surpport us. Our show will run for a week and to make this possible we have to raise money.

 In our Professional Practise class we decided to have a christmas craft fair so as a class we set about brain storming our ideas. We all came up with different and interesting ideas so it was clear we all wanted to make a verity of items instead of limiting ourself to just one.
We each set about making a sample of what we would like to make and a purposal to show cost materials etc. This way we all got a chance to put our ideas into action.
My idea was to make brooches I first started to make them using tights and wire but found the finishing was hard so I then moved on to making them with disovable fabric and wire. Although this technique took more time the finished piece was alot more resovled and well finished than my previous idea.The dissolvable fabric cost me 4.75 per half a metre and 1.75 each thread I used which was 4, but I was able to make all my brooches by using these meterails, the wire was 2.00 and I had the embroidery thread alread. Over all not including my time it cost me 13.75. I made some with fabric as pictured below attached to a handbag.

We all got divided into groups there were Team Felt in which the girls were making felt earrings and also another great idea as part of this group was to take orders to get jumpers with our college logo, class and name printed on them. Team Print were making handmade cards using interesting techniques and then my team which was Team Thread and I was making my brooches, Kayleigh making head pieces and other jewelry, Sarah making knitted and crochet shoulder pieces and iphone covers and Bobby making her bracelets. It was great to be on this team as we all brought our own individual style to our work and we meet up outside college hours to do our work together which was a great help and great fun!! 

It was the day of the Craft Fair and we were all buzzing with relief and excitement. Our target was to raise 400euro. We had from 9.00am til 4.00pm to sell our work. We all meet up in the Art block of our college and were split up, some of the girls went to the main building for the first part of the day and the rest and myself stayed in the Art block. We set up with two tables and we had 3 manikins, one I showed of my brooch and Sarah her shoulder and neck piece as pictured below.
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I displayed my brooches on a jewelry stand as pictured below. Also I hand sewed decoration display holders for each brooch.

The first half of the day went well I sold four brooches two were priced at 2.00euro and other two at 5.00euro so I made 14.00euro, however because I made 13 brooches altogether I was abit dissapointed as I put so much effort into there construction. The girls did really well selling their handmade cards and Sarah her beauiful neck pieces as pictured above.
The second half of the day we switched other and we went to the main building. The main building was very quite and although there were students in the canteen were we set up they did not seem to be that interested in our sale lucky for us the teachers were and Sarah and Emma sold some items!

After the weeks put in doing all this extra work I was delighted to hear we raise 435euro! Tara's great idea with the college jumpers, has loads of students interested in purchasing one so that means we will make an even bigger profit!! We all worked so well as a team and it was a good experience!! If I was to change anything it would be the loctation of the event that we would sell our crafts at a stand at a crafts fair as people go there especially to purchase handmade crafts.

Annette Messager

Annette Messager was born in 1943, in France. There she attended Ecole des Arts Decorotifs, but she did not complete her time as she was asked to leave because she spent more time in museums than in the class room.

Still fixated on becoming an artist Messager set out to make her dream a reality. As she was only in her 20’s she found the experience quite a lonely one, as at that time women in any work place were not taken seriously and her work would often be described ‘as looking like a man had done it’. 

 Through out Messagers career she has created work that deals with issue of self identity, sexuality and body, sexual and physical abuse, sin, children, symbols, effigies, disguise, distortion, fairy tales, repletion, social issues of morality and the role of women.  

For this she is widely regarded as one of Europe’s most important artist.

“Ralph Rugoff said Annette Messager is one of Europe’s most inventive and

            compelling artist, and for four decades has been making art that crosses

            humour and tragedy, toughness and sentiment, magic and everydayness all in

            the cause of celebrating the full multiplicity of human nature.”(Hayward,2009)

 Mes Trophees, 1986–88,( fig 1), Messager uses both photography and mixed media. The photograph shows souls of feet as a fragment of the body. It appears the feet are that of a women. Messager has then used mixed media to draw images on the soul of the feet. The images appear to be that of animals and a sea and two boats surrounding it, also birds. Messager allows the mixed media to run down the images, as if it appears to be wet. Trophees or Trophy meaning an award for success in war or hunting which it would seem Messager is using the images to portray a sign of victory.

                               Annette Messager, Mes Trophees, 1986–88, mixed media with photgraph, two panels, 205×170cm(fig1)

‘My Vows’ Messager uses again fragments of the body to portray physical/sexual identities and the understanding of humanity. Also shows Messagers surrealist photography and the importance it has on her work.

 I feels that compared to Mes Trophees in which Messager works on a much smaller scale ‘My Vows’(fig 2.) may be Messagers way of expressing the identity of people male, female, young and old, it might be that gender could be chosen and not given.

It appears as Messagers passion for working through using fragments of the body and photography on this piece in a much larger and more interesting scale that she is not finished with using this way of expressing her work and ideas.  

                                      Annette Messager,  Close up of My Vows 1988-91. (fig.2)

                                                     Annette Messager,   Articulated-disarticulated, (2001,2002)(fig.3)

                                                             

The above photographys of Annette Messagers work were displayed inThe Haywards gallery entitled 'The Messagners'. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWKGTPIobo0

I thinks Messager’s work can be sad and funny and sometimes both. I like how Messager can take a moment in time and create a piece that is about a situation that is sad, and create it in such a way that it makes the viewer smile or laugh. I think Messager does this best in her work on Articulated-disarticulated  (2001-2)(fig3), were Messager hangs stuffed animals she created using techniques such as knitting, crochet, sewing, embroidery on bungee cord that pulls the figures up and down. Also Message uses a motor device to pull some of the figures around which I think this is what makes Messager’s work fun and exciting to the viewer.  As an up and coming artist myself I have learnt that it is not just the piece of work that is important but also the theme and the meaning behind it and how one displays their work to show its true form. 

As a textile artist myself I also work using techniques such as knitting, embroidery, sewing, photography and drawing. Below is a piece I have created entitled ‘Homage to Pink Floyd’ in which I have used these techniques hand/machine embroidery and sewing. I like to use bright colours as I feel they make the piece more eye catching.I like the way in which Messager uses colour in her work it hightlights the detail in her stuffed animals and photography. 

                                               Danielle Jordan, 'Homage to Pink Floyd' 2011

Annette Messager now 68 is continuing to successfully create work which is important, fun, interesting and inspiring to all people and up and coming artist.