Apron of wives/ Research/ Artists working with fabric

Wife Of...

 I have an idea to make an item of women's clothing to print on. My initial idea was of a white gown, a bride, a ghost but it feels too obvious and theatrical, where as an apron would likely be more representative of being a wife/ woman in the Victorian time. Looking at domesticity, the role of simply being "wife of" and also looking at a loss of personal identity that comes with wearing a uniform. I think an apron, a historic garment still in use, to represent the link with historic women and our lives today. many women still a loss of identity and id like to investigate what that could look like as a visual object. I'd like to print names on the aprons lifted from the stones around the church yard in the original font.

to explore the story of the women here who seem even in death to have lost their identity, simply listed as the property of someone else.

I'd like to make my own apron from a vintage pattern. I'd like to wear it while I gather my research before applying the print.

Works with my mantra created for this project of " ritual, routine, repeat"

The act of work and dressing for a role.

An apron made of a sheer see through fabric/ cotton to create a feel of ghostliness, the classic " white lady" that seems to haunt any historic site. Also the lightness of  memory,  In contrast to the lightness of the fabric the prints will be lifted from stone carvings, they will have weight.

Below is a little history/ research of the aprons of the 1800 which are the time period of the graves I have been looking at at St Marys.

A sample of rubbing the fabric directly with graphite, picks up lots of detail and is more effective than paper as it doesn't rip under the pressure.

I've ordered this pattern online, for making my own traditional apron.

Sketch book work behind the idea.


Looking at other artists who use clothing/ fabric in their work to connect to female identity....

Louise Bourgeois

"Louise Bourgeois’s connection to fabric goes back to her childhood years when she helped out in her family’s tapestry restoration workshop. As an adult, she long associated the act of sewing with repairing on a symbolic level, as she attempted to fix the damage she caused in personal relationships. She even held a special regard for spools of thread and needles as tools that served this purpose"
Quote from The MoMA website on her connection with sewing/ fabric

Louise Bourgeois was such a prolific artist and as used so many approaches there is always more to be discovered within her work.
Here I am looking at some of her work involving clothing and textile and how the choice of medium and approach informs the work.

In this mixed media installation titled " Pink days and Blue days"1997

Bougouies uses items of adult and children's clothing to explore childhood memory, she refers to her parents struggling marriage and how they would try to buy her affection with clothing. One of the items being a silk coat embroidered with her child hood nick names. Bourgeoise associates Pink with femininity and happiness and blue with sadness and depression.

clothing is such a personal item that links to memory identity and charged with feelings.

The clothes used here are highly personal items, however I wish to create a new item of clothing that is  uniform/ universal, to hold a collective memory/ story by using the many names from the grave stones at the church.

This work titled " The Good mother" 2003 Bourgoise has repurposed her own "beautiful clothes from youth" to make sculptures.
I like the reference to dress making in this work with the cotton spools and how the figure is trapped/ tided to them, she is on her knees, in fact. is this a reference to feelings of motherhood and femininity and service. There is much depth to this work, being made from the artist own " sacrificed" clothes and the association of textile and needle work as being a traditional acceptable pastime for a woman being turned into a rebellion against these gender roles.  I really like this work.

Another work in the series of re purposed clothes is this sculpture titles "Endless pursuit" 2000.

Shows a patched together female body with a swollen belly and sagging breast. The pursuit is that of conception and the artists describes the work as showing how a body feels rather than what it looks like, its in contrast to the sexualised, perfect body of the traditional female nude. The use of fabric in this work gives it a tactile quality, whilst also being very crude, the needle work is not perfect, it is rebellious and seems quite urgent. 

My approach will be to go for neat stitching as I'm initially working from a Victorian aesthetic. The way I mark the apron that will draw on this rebellion. 

Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin is an artist that uses fabric and embroidery as a statement, to create a feminist narrative to her work, i have covers her work before but it was certainly in my mind when considering using textile for my approach.

The work above " Dont loose hope"
Is one of her many quilts/ tapestries. Again very crudely made, words often mis spelt, crossed out,
the message one of self belief and again used as an act of rebellion against, gender roles and woman shaming.

Annette Messager

"Mistore Des Robes (The Story of Dresses)" 1990

"For me, the fantastic is in daily life; 

real life is more extraordinary than all of the imagination"

Images  taken from "art and feminism" published by Phaidon

I really love this work by French artist Annette Messager. She is an artist, again,  who uses many approaches to explore gender, identity and cultural aspects of what it means to be a woman.

In these assemblage pieces she uses dresses to represent the female form, I like how the work is presented in the glass topped cabinets, they are like coffins, which certainly fits in with my current theme. Its full of clues about the women's identity and it really gives me the

same feeling about the women of st Marys, the clues that I am gathering about their identity  beyond being just someones wife and really just reinforcing for me this very personal connection to clothing.

 There is a mystery about the women that she has created, In my work I feel like Im trying to solve a mystery. In Messagers work she creates different roles for herself and suggests that a persons identity is not fixed and can be changed like clothes. I agree with this idea and I think the clothes you wear can change how you feel about yourself, and they certainly change how you are viewed, particularly as a woman, these are often never the same conclusion.