Making Sense - Exhibition at Istituto Marangoni London
Making Sense is an exhibition of practice-based faculty research taking place at Istituto Marangoni London from 17-28 February, weekdays from 10-5, in The Materials Lab (101) at IML.
Making Sense showcases the rich diversity and creativity of our tutors’ research activities, as they seek new meanings, methods, materials and futures for fashion and for design. In the context of local and global social, economic, cultural and environmental imperatives, these projects address urgent questions about the new potentialities of resources, identities, narratives, and materialities that may help to shape a better future.
The work on display visually ‘explains’ a variety of research processes, the values embodied in§ these, sharing distinctive research outcomes and works in progress. It aims to demystify and promote the multiple ways that creative practice might function as a vital method of inquiry, as an embodied way of knowing, and as a conduit to possibility-finding.
Exhibits include national and international projects that preserve, promote and celebrate heritage materials and craft: including the Kotpad project, a collaboration between IML, IM Mumbai, Creative Bee of Hyderabad, and an at-risk artisan community in Kotpad, India; Fashioned From Trees work by IML members of the Barkcloth Research Network, a cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural and multi-national research team investigating the properties and potential of Ugandan barkcloth; and the Radically Local project, excavating, exploring and reconstructing local fibre, fabric and fashion systems and aesthetics within the UK. It includes work by AO Textiles, a sustainable textile consultancy developing scalable natural dyes; natural accessories by Michelle Lowe-Holder, produced as part of the BioDeepMap research project, in her partnership with the Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts; Rafael El Baz’s experimentation with advanced laser technology to create dye-less colour and pattern on metals; Zoe Gilbertson’s bast fibre research, as part of her Churchill Fellowship to examine linen, hemp and nettle fibre production and processing across Western Europe and the UK; Julian Smith’s experimentation with repurposed waste fabrics from drag costumes in fashion; Nick Clements’ use of photography in the construction of speculative histories from fragmented memories in a series of staged re-enactments.