Hello, Welcome to our end-of-year catalogue. It features work produced by our Foundation students over the last year for their Final Major Project, combining pieces by onsite students with limited access to workshops and technicians due to social distancing, and work by our online learners located around the world. The students were supported by our ingenious staff and technicians, who created workshop video tutorials from the perspective of making at your kitchen table, helping students find alternative ways to make work. Going back into lockdown mid-course was a challenge. We were aware that many of our onsite students often had lack of access to materials, workspace, and even a device to attend class! We are so proud of the many ways our students have risen to the challenge, finding alternative routes to creativity in such difficult circumstances. When they look back at their accomplishments through the year, I hope they recognise their resilience, determination, and resourcefulness — qualities they can call on throughout their lives. It was such a pleasure working with the students of 2021, please enjoy looking at their wonderful work. Claire McCormack Programme Director
Textile Craft The Design Pathway covers a wide range of subjects and practices. There is common ground in our interest in materials, in making, in problem solving, and in exploring the possibilities of what design can offer. Now, more than ever, design is needed to look at how we can shape a future that is more sustainable and can speak to the issues that are present in all our lives. Textile Craft is a dialogue with materials. It’s a multi-disciplinary approach to interrogating the potential of an idea through making. The making is sparked by observation and the subsequent interpretation of this leads to a function; commercial or conceptual. This may lean towards environmental, wearable or ornamental appropriations but at the centre of this, is work that is immersive in tactility, intrigue and creativity.
Vasilisa Ashurkova
I have explored my personal experience of suffering with Migraines to develop a mixed media installation, using printed fabric and a constructed headpiece for the viewer to be immersed amongst.
Isobel Durling
Throughout my project, I have been exploring the pharmaceutical industry alongside neural functioning and how the brain responds to drugs. My final piece takes a look at how dopamine plays a key role in our brain’s reward circuit and acts as a powerful reinforcer of the connection between drug consumption and resulting pleasure. My aim was to juxtapose this darker and more uncomfortable subject matter through producing soft, colourful squishy shapes in a very tactile and visually captivating way.
Achi Finnigan
As the feedback loops of climate change accelerate so will the decay of this capitalist society, this decay will leave empty space for new experimentation of the world that we want. I have explored through print, the varying processes of decay and what will come after, what might fill the spaces left. This decay needn’t be a negative event and the positives that we might find through the rewilding may give us the opportunity for new forms of communication and expression.
Laila Hendrickse
My work is an exploration into the theme of ‘interconnectivity and fungal networks’, with an interest in the relationship between humans and nature. I used processes of connecting, weaving, knotting, and looping to create organic forms to place on the body. Networks and root systems heavily influenced my outcomes, as I was fascinated by the fact that fungi allows for symbiosis, which let's trees and plants communicate, share nutrients, nurse the sick. I feel that fungi have an uncanny intelligence, and therefore provoke us to question our place in the natural world.
Marie Jatta
Bedroom core is the contemporary core based around the aesthetic of a teenage bedroom (typically 90s) the name of 'bedroom' in conjunction to one's safe place - somewhere where there aren't any labels or expectations, where you can be free and be whom you are. Keywords: Nostalgia, 90s, Rave, Psychedelic Individualism, Self-emancipation, gender-fluidity.
Danyu Danielle Ku
My FMP is about melting glaciers and forest fire. In this project, I want to explore what people can do to help prevent this happening in the future and also how we can help those animals living in the forest and the North Pole.
Henrietta Mitchell
For my final project I’ve looked at the concept of touch, focusing in three main areas: Early development/ play, the small and sudden sensations of touch as well as the temptations of touch.
Olivia Padwick
My project is an exploration of the male gaze's influence on the depiction of women throughout history and within contemporary culture. In my final piece I have identified three historical female figures (Cleopatra, Veronica Franco and Zelda Fitzgerald) who are routinely misrepresented and who, to me, perfectly exemplify the existence and power of the male gaze on dictating the way we see women. By creating prints and patterns inspired by their lives, my intention was to reframe these women as protagonists and multifaceted individuals, detaching them from their existing narratives and conveying a sense of power, intellect and autonomy.
Ruby Shephard
My project, Ocean Industries, is a celebration of communities who are finding a balance between nature and industry. I created textile translations, predominantly crochet, of environmental advancements such as artificial corals and underwater kelp farming.
Veronika Sukhozadova
I have chosen the topic “Money and Manipulation" My task was to recreate the idea of how people manage money, as well as control others with the help of money. I wanted to show how in our time money is important to absolutely everyone, and how it depends on the word “Manipulation"
Laurie Williams
This piece is about gender individuality, colour and imagery represent different troupes in todays stereotypical genders.
Letty Lawson
Morpheus became the focus of my FMP which lead me to exploring dreamlike print responses. Using a selection of printed and stitched processes, I manipulated fabrics into wing inspired structures.
Iona Bathurst
I was inspired by the negative effect single use plastics have on the environment. I specifically used print processes and elements of 3D details to develop collaged responses to visualize my concern.
Flora Campbell
My work is about exploring the dark side to fairy tales.
Rachel Chung
“A door to enter a better place, don’t be afraid and be blessed for those that get into here!”
Victoria Dobbs
Abandoned, discarded or lost fishing gear is having a significant and growing impact on marine life. Whilst the environmental implications of marine litter are well documented, the economic impacts are largely unknown, although estimated to be large. I have explored knotting processes to create a netted installation to highlight the impact man has through fishing.
Silvy Fernandes
Using the distinctive divide within the Spanish city, Barcelona as an inspiration to explore the traditional Catalan architecture, contrasting with Antoni Gaudí’s modernist buildings, I have developed a collection of wearable concepts.
Sabina Gareeva
For my final piece, I have decided to use the textures of intestines to make a sculptural piece, showing a raw yet beautiful perspective of them. The piece is made to put on a body, representing a transparent representation of the human body. The work is about bringing awareness of the barbaric and unacceptable acts in China concerning illegal organ harvesting.
Ella Harrison
Taking inspiration from hip hop culture, I developed a series of playful responses in relation to the body by using graffiti as method of communication & decoration.
Vega Hertel
This project seeks to find feasible solutions for the textiles and fashion industry in which intersectional environmentalism takes the forefront. It looks at the redevelopment off traditional craft skills returning to a circle of local industry, enhancing collaboration between the stages of production.
Charley Huggett
My project looks at restricting communication, noise and stimulation.
Erin McCall
My project as it stands aims to investigate the rising trend of spiritual practices within the western world. I am intrigued by the concept of mysticism; the pursuit of becoming one with a knowing or absolute, the attainment of an altered state of consciousness or transformation of the spirit aided by various practices or mystic experiences.
Bhaanavi Mirpuri
I, along with many of my friends, were brought up with strict rules that our society had normalised. Don't marry someone with the same sex, don't marry someone from a different culture and don't marry someone from a different socio-ethnic group despite being from the same culture/religion. I chose the theme of un-normalising normalisation to show the beauty of marriage without these restrictions, as well as the consequences of imposing these outdated beliefs.
Martha Pinfold
My project ‘(Too) Close’, explored the conflicting nature between touch and bacteria. I investigated the juxtaposition between the comfort of touch and the discomfort of bacteria; desire vs fear. The current pandemic allowed me to explore my idea from the angle of restricted touch and my project soon became centred around visualising the transfer and spread of bacteria.
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Shangye Florence Run
The theme is about my experience of appearance anxiety, mainly to express how I define myself through my appearance anxiety. This work is about my broken self.
Luna Smith
My theme investigates the negative stigma that surrounds men’s mental health. The emphasis is to encourage men to speak out about their emotions and struggles and to approach this subject in a more optimistic manner.
Jenna Tappin
The theme of my FMP is ‘Physical Disabilities’, where I used my own personal knowledge as well as research to explore the topic through colour, shape and texture. I then used my sister’s old wheelchair to create a final piece. Purple is symbolic/ recognised as the ‘disability colour’.
Kangyu Amera Wang
An investigation on how children perceive an excessive amount of parental love, as well as the consequences when parents take actions on children in the name of love.
Mia Wood
My project was looking into the emotional and physical struggles that aren’t often seen in regards to eating disorder recovery. With a highlight on the more scary physical side effects malnutrition can cause the body, to try to educate others who may be supporting someone through recovery, or just someone wanting to know more and to help show that eating disorders should not be glamorised.
Yi Cai
My idol who is named Karina from the K-pop group AESPA inspires me and the concept behind my theme is to create avatar’s of the group. The aim is to also build my own virtual world through weaving, embroidery, and also clay, elastic tubes and sequins and material combined with drawing. A combination of mixed-media has been applied to build a virtual world for my final outcome.
Jo-Syuan Chen
My FMP explores how the mind and the body connect with each other. Having experienced the effect of mental health problems due to stress, I created a piece of work that speaks about how the body responds to the way we think, feel, and act.
Stella Cho
My FMP is an imagination of humans that are living underwater due to climate change. Not only polar bears are suffering from melting ice, but humans will also face the consequences one day. We will lose our habitat because of our thoughtless actions. My final piece can be interpreted as either an armband or a diving vest. It is a survival kit to live underwater and my skirt (or a top) shows the coexistence with sea creatures to show that humans are now one part of underwater life.
Peipei Dou
Before I attended the foundation year, I was a music student in senior high school. Classical music gives me a lot of ideas and creative imagination. So I decided to consider how to transfer music into visual art and also combine music with textile making. In this project, I used the elements of music notes, stave, line and block to create textile print final outcome.
Chelsea Hsiao
The undefined body outline of a women's curves.
Lisa Li
My work is about the world as seen through the eyes of elderly people with Alzheimer's disease. They are most likely to get ill at dusk, when their cognition becomes so broken that they can't recognise eating food and they fall back into time over and over again.
Hongyi Li
My work is about Chinese herbal medicine, which conveys healing and health. This is both a tapestry and a cloak. All the colors of the materials in my work are dyed with Chinese herbs. The cloth on the work is also wrapped in Chinese herbs. I want to give you a soothing visual and olfactory experience.
Yushang Qiu
A floral feminism, exploring the relevance between female body awaken and the blooming of the flower. Focusing on the stretch of a free body and growing flowers.
Georgia Tao
Eating food should be a pleasurable experience for people to enjoy in life. However, I have seen a lot of fake gluttony videos on the internet that spoils food. These videos arouse my disgust because of food wastage and over consumption may damage health. I hope that more people will pay attention to this issue.
Dian Wang
Everyone may have a wound on their body, Some people get scared when they see the gory scene, We need to learn to be brave and try to overcome our fear.
Weihan Zhou
My work is inspired by the Korean film “Hope". The film is about a real-life incident in which a girl was sexually abused.