Lecture 3. 18th February - Body Extensions

In this lecture we looked at the work of Rebeca Horn, who is a renound performance artist, who looks at the senses and extending her body. We were shown a video of some of her work and her discussing her pieces and who are her influences. She spoke about how her grandmother (who passed away before she was born), she said that they moved around a lot and lived a gypsy existence. She creates pieces of work which she wears in her performances, such as Finger Gloves (1972) where she wore extensions of her fingers and dragged them along the walls of a room, depicing how she could touch both walls at the same time, there is also Cockatoo Mask, which she wears in the video which covers the face, blocking sight which then increases the intensity of other sensations such as touch which she explored through the softness of the exterior of the mask. Body extensions and augmentations are all around us, we all have a body and can do with it what we wish, whether it be wearing clothes or glasses to tattooing and peircing the skin. There are even the extremes of plastic surgery in which people change the way they look in a drastic way. if i was to extend my body in any way, i'd like to extend my fingers so that I could reach objects which were out of reach. I like how this artists work has been kept for over 30 years but is such a prominent part of Art in the 21st century.

Lecture 2. 28th Jan - Tapestries

In this lecture I found out about tapestries and the history of them. We looked at how tapestries were made and their significance in history and how they were commisioned by rich people and didn't have to be decorative but could tell people stories or give them messages.
I learnt about how tapestries are actually made and how the pattern is depicted. Tapestries are made on a loom, there are 2 types of thread that make up a tapestry, a parallel warp thread and then another weft thread which goes across the warp and gives the pattern. The colour in these tapestires were created by dyeing certain yarns that they used, they dyed them using crushed beetles, fruits and anything natural plant which had a strong colour.
In the medieval times tapestries were mainly created in Western Europe, these tapestries were and alternative to paintings and could be transported across many miles due to their ability to be rolled up without damaging the work. Some tapestries were used to depict certain stories, some of biblical importance or some with an extended or a deep meaningful metaphor which is called an Allegory. An example of one of these types of tapestries is the Lady and the Unicorn, these were a set of tapestries, each one depicting each of the senses, there is another set of tapestries called The Hunt of the Unicorn, which depict the hunting and capturing of the unicorn. The two major interpretations of the tapestries hinge on Pagan and Christian symbolism. The pagan interpretation focueses on the medieval lore of beguiled lovers, and the Christian writings interpret the unicorn and its death as the Passion of the Christ.
I've never looked into the history of tapestries and I thought this lecture was really informative and interesting. In the last half of the lecture we were given a task to think of our own Allegory, and to draw a cartoon of our own tapestry as a group. We thought of an event in our lives in which we could all relate to, which was moving away from home and the feelings we felt in the first week of moving away. We drew upon medeival times and drew our home as a big castle and then drew a long winding path which was the road from our home to our home in Cardiff, then we drew our destination as an ugly place with goblins flying around it, this was to depict the sadness we felt when we left home and how we missed home a lot in the first week of living away. We drew trees around the long winding path to the castle to show the darkness of the forest and how we were feeling, leaving our home. We concluded the lecture by standing up and telling the group what our tapestry was about. I enjoyed this lecture and learnt a lot about tapestries and their meaning.

Lecture 1. 21st Jan - Textiles Timeline

In this lecture we were given a task, which was to look at our timeline, and think about where in our lives have we come into contact with textiles.
As a group 5 of us thought about all the different stages in life e.g baby, toddler, child, teenager, older teen to adult.
We then drew a timeline labelling these stages and then we wrote down all the different textiles we could think of that we had been in contact with. I thought this was a really good activity, it made us think about the many number of different fabrics and materials we come into contact with everyday let alone all our lives.