Term 1: The Fabric of Life…

Re- configuring and re-shaping our sense of togetherness through the medium of textiles

The story as it unfolds…

Last term we examined our relationship to the land, our ‘oneness’ we felt with nature as a response to the Kent Morris, Never Alone installation. We created a large scale collaged mural with artist in residence, Sarah Rowe and this was then printed on fabric and will become banners that will symbolise how our community shared their stories and experiences and how we connected in a time of massive upheaval.

The stories that are told in this mural acknowledge the significance of textiles as an important part of our everyday lives.

Throughout history textiles have proven to be as important to our existence and survival as water, food and shelter.

The fabric created by the children symbolises the ‘fabric of their lives’ providing a canvas that holds the many individual stories of connection. These many stories come together to create one big story. Nature is the prevailing theme that runs throughout the fabric.

This term, we will further our explorations of the fabric mural, collage, stitch and textiles and examine how textiles are a fundamental and essential necessity in our lives and how they have the potential to bring people together. Sharing this mural and the accompanying printed fabric of the mural with the wider community and understanding the process of making fabric and stitching fabric will become a joint community collaborative project.

 We launched back into our project with a reflection on nature and why we felt so connected during lockdown to the world around us. This term we will come to understand the process of designing and making our own individual fabrics.

In week 2 we revisited the experience of working with nature through observational drawing. We were inspired by the Fallen Fruit wallpapered rooms at the NGV. Here detailed drawings of nature were highlighted through the brilliant use of colour. We examined in detail objects collected from around the playground, re visiting our connection to the school and environments.

In week 3 we began to explore the process of using thread. We built on both the collage work with Sarah, and the colour work from last week and stitched these ideas together to create a stitched collage of inspirational shapes from nature. This work will form the preliminary design work for the development of a block that students will create to make their own printed fabric.

Below are some of the amazing images created by the students using the stitched collage technique.