Victoria and Albert Museum - 26 January 2011

All that you need to know about art and design can be found in the wonderful place known as the Victoria and Albert Museum. Its extraordinary collection of sensibility and beauty is displayed in dimly lit rooms which have an atmosphere of interiority usually found in sacred spaces. The halls and galleries invoke the kind of mood best suited to contemplation where, in glowing cases, fabulous things give up their presence to patient eyes. The heart is filled with joy at the surprises which can bubble up from gazing at a row of ancient Korean spoons, a humble figurine from the Han dynasty or a gorgeous Ikat coat from Uzbekistan. In whatever direction you turn you find sublime ingenuity and unsurpassed craftsmanship. The latter is none other than the materialisation of care and tenderness towards the substance of expression. Often the maker is unknown and it can be refreshing to gaze at something unmediated by the baggage of art history or cultural reputation. Yet context is never lost because at its root the experience of art and design is not really of the intellect or indeed of history, but of feeling and being connected to something much bigger than our individual selves. It's true we can't do without an analytic mind but in the presence of an embroidered sixteenth-century fragment from Peru, asking questions seemed as banal as the answers were ineffable. All we could do was look and feel and carry away with us that day a reminder of what might be possible with a good eye and a marvellous collection like the V&A.

Close Reading Janis Jefferies

Our Second Year module Contextualising Craft Practice is fast taking shape as a research skills course which explores contexts of contemporary practice but also retains a conscious intention to develop students' skills as researchers and critical thinkers. At first glance this intention may seem an obvious requirement. However, striking an optimum balance between, on the one hand, introducing stimulating content, while on the other, building students' critical skills - is not at all simple. A danger is that critical or "academic" skills can seem a dull and dusty turn-off when there is so much exciting visual territory to explore. However, the strategic acquistion of critical skills is essential to fully appreciate the rich subtlety that goes on in the studio. So, for the last three years, we have been experimenting with methods which embed critical skills without losing touch with the extraordinary range of ideas and practices which now make up contemporary textiles.

Yesterday's session was a successful case in point in which the balance worked! We close read sections of Janis Jefferies [right] Textiles {in Carson and Pajaczkowska (2000) Feminist Visual Culture New York: Routledge}. However, we began by reading some lines included in a review of Seamus Heaney's new collection Human Chain. The intention was to introduce the method of close reading through parts of one of these poems without addressing the context. And we saw how without that context our interpretation of the content tended to be faulty. This led us to Jefferies' chapter.

Within a few paragraphs of that text we were deep into issues which implicated the roles and identities of women as artists/makers, and the hierachical snobbery with which, not so long ago, subjects such as Textiles were treated as "women's work." On film, we followed up Jefferies' references to Judy Chicago [left], Miriam Schapiro and Lucy Lippard, and took a look at the Guerrilla Girls' 2006 symposium at MOMA in which they explained their strategy of challenging the patriarchal control of exhibitions which continue to marginalise women artists. Our discussion was lively; students were surprised to learn that only as recently as the late 1970s and early 1980s had the pioneering work of Chicago, Schapiro, Sherman - among many others - begun to tip the balance.

We discussed how choices of materials and techniques can have political implications into which meanings are already woven; and how these can be deployed reflexively to resist stereotypical responses. The class spoke of how friends and others outside Art and Design still have scant understanding of what Textiles is as a subject; and how they are often patronised or their work misunderstood.

And how might they counter these attitudes, we wondered?

By gaining awareness of the critical debates - such as those posed by Janis Jefferies - which involve the relationship between social indentity (as women, as informed practitioners) and the radical challenge the content of their work might present. We found a marvellous line in an interview with Judy Chicago who, speaking of her influential teaching, said: "From the beginning it was a content-based pedagogical method. Find your content, then select the media that best expresses that content; and if you need to, develop the skills to mistress that medium. This is exactly how I work." In other words, a subject is not defined by it's skills or the materials it uses, but how it expresses content.

It was an enjoyable session so we celebrated with a group picture [top].

Eye for details - the photo-essay as visual research

The photo-essay is a handy way of collecting together visual research in contexts where the eye notices details and moves quickly on. The purpose then is to capture eye-catching details as they occur. An essential item is of course a camera: light, pocket-sized and digital; and an eye: curious, critical and composed. The sequence of images recorded mark the eye's journey through place and presents a visual map of unexpected detours led by the eye. There can be marvellous suprises; and rather than 'views', it is often small details which best evoke particular memories or reveal unexpected connections. Hence, I try to concentrate on details just as I find them, and rather than start with much of a preconceived idea, I trust the eye and follow it. It's quite an entertaining game to play as you meander through a city like Baudelaire's flaneur.

I tried it recently in Italy. The chance to explore where I was with just eye and pocket camera seemed a worthwhile challenge and an opportunity to test the photo-essay as a potential method for our students; maybe it can be allied with studio themes, perhaps with brief captions from chosen (poetic or literary?) texts. Whichever, this way of studying appearances becomes a phenomenology of those fleeting details which cause us to hestitate and record the transience of our own passing eye.

Cavandoli Workshop

Some of the Y2 weavers take part in the Cavandoli workshop. This is an old technique of knotting multiple weft yarns onto a single warp yarn, in this workshops forms were carved into a high density polystyrene which then provides the form that will be knotted round.

Sketchbook Pages Yr 1 2009-10

Below is a snap shot of some of our year 1 (09/10) Textile Crafts student sketchbooks. As part of their Visual Studies Module students are introduced to a variety of drawing styles and encouraged to explore and experiment with media and technique. Through the course of the year they develop an individual visual handwriting with some exciting results.

Heather Walkinshaw

Heather Irwin

Gina Scholes

Hannah Green

Lousia Crompton

Claire England

Practical Theorists: An Exhibition of Year 1 Artists' Books

Creating meaningful relationships between the primacy of practice and the development of appropriate critical skills is best done by our students within what Etienne Wenger describes as communities of practice, "Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of understanding, ways of addressing recurring problems." (Wenger 2010)

Our course recognises that the key motivation for students is the primacy of their practice and within this students are "practical theorists" working within a community of practice made up of peers and staff, as well wider creative and professional contexts of contemporary textiles.

Together, we are exploring methods of engaging students with theoretical material in ways which allow them to individualise critically written outcomes in formats that include practical skills.

Examples of this - of bringing theory and practice into closer alignment - are currently on show in the university library. The exhibition shows artists' books created by first year students which thematically examine images and influences, signs and symbols related to chosen themes or issues in modernist art and design. Already, we are noticing that these deliberate approaches are increasing students' ability to theorise their own practice.

Selvedge picks 'Top of the Class'

Jade Marczynski was selected by Selvedge as one of the top 5 graduating textile students 2010 at New Designers this year. Her stitchwork captures an honest history of World War II documenting conversations with veterans and ex land army girls.