Putting the ...Um? in Tri...um?ph

In reflecting on Triumph, I think it has been a good generative exercise to initiate studio work early in the semester. A "showpiece" is not something I would usually embrace and therefore throughout the design process I often found myself being critical about what I was producing being able to fit into this context. This is also good in some ways, as I guess the constant emphasis on "how your work being displayed/experienced informing its content" is sinking in and now second nature.

In approaching the Triumph brief initially, I broke-down their explanation blurb on "Shape Sensation." I interpreted the notion of SENSATION in relation to wearing as a type of self-concious corporeal body. I then tried to look at how this is shown through SHAPE in terms of build, configuration and construction. Overall I aimed to used methods of refiguring and deforming to show an interplay between the body shape and the ideal shape, the physical body and the aspirational body, corporeal space and physical space.

I looked at images of plastic surgery - which is I guess literal body reformation. I also looked at a few surrealist images using displacement including Hans Bellmer's deformed "Die Puppe" dolls and also Man Ray's "The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse". My process involved taking apart bras, displacing and bulding them on the manequin, then overlaying these forms with knit which was darted, folded etc. I tried to make use of a construction method in which the underlayed fabric of a dart is extended beyond the underwire point to further the fabric and form body covering, thus a fold being exposed - hopefulling revealing a type of inside/outside. This kind of worked, but I didn't really make the fold edges very clear in my technicals. I also tried to displace underwires to other parts of the body to show a non-traditional sense of border, 'support' and definition

The use of some type of folding showing a duality in form is something I would like to continue in my studio work.