Faye Butler

Honours 2020

DWELLING PLACE

Made with Squarespace

Introduction, Focus and Research Questions

This project considers the 20th century domestic textiles within my personal collection; the beauty found in the linens, the mystery surrounding their creation and subsequent rejection and donation to secondhand shops. These linens provide the source for my generative thinking and making.

I am informed by domesticity and living conditions in the mid 20th century and how that correlates to the current conditions of being ‘shut-in’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. The notion of dwelling and place are heightened within our current experiences of interior space. This has relevance to my practice as I attempt to make sense of my own isolation. 

Reflecting on Bachelard’s phenomenological view of our inhabited spaces (Bachelard et al. 2014), I will consider the textiles original unidentified makers and our interior places.  I will consider the archive as it relates to the opportunity shop and the memories that are contained within the objects there.

My focus will be on re-contexualising my domestic linens as the basis for contemporary objects. Translating these lived crafted textiles into new artefacts, I will use the visual cues inherent in these textiles to consider their purpose and relinquishment; transferring and re-working the designs and wear/damage onto metal, or enhancing the textile itself with further embellishment and manipulation to bring it to a new audience.

My materials of choice are liquid enamel on copper, but I also plan to incorporate other techniques such as applying photographic decals, electroforming, etching, knitting and crocheting metals, and textile manipulation including photo transfer, dying and distressing to explore metaphor, meaning and narrative.

Research questions:

How can twentieth century needlework be re-contextualised as contemporary jewellery and objects?

What materials can be manipulated to imbue meaning and narrative to twentieth century domestic linen?