art making & exhibiting 2023

kate farrugia

My choice to create ‘wearable art’ conveys my ideas by interacting with the body and self to express my personal connection to the artwork. The feedback from my unit 3 artworks propelled me to feature a deeper personal connection to the work. Through the use of textiles, I convey 'growth and decay through hardship' using my own Aikido experience as a metaphor making the garment a multifaceted wearable narrative. Unlike traditional art, textiles are less restrictive, and the three-dimensional quality creates a more interactive viewing experience for the audience.

I started by sketching possible designs for the garment and conducting trials incorporating different techniques in creating 'decay' and 'growth' including using rust paint, embroidering, burning fabric and painting. I encountered challenges when conducting these trials because there were more failures than successes forcing me to continue searching for an effective way of portraying the growth and the decay. Ultimately, I decided to hand-embroider the decay on the top and machine-embroider flowers on the pants which are intended to resemble Hakama. While this sounds like a relatively similar process, it requires very different techniques since precision is vital for the hand-sewing but machine-sewing the flowers allowed for flexibility as it adds character. For the pants, I used organic, thick, heavyweight, black-dyed denim to replicate the Hakama appearance but for the top, to emulate the look of the uniform look I chose moderately thick, cream-coloured, organic cotton accented with a lighter thread running throughout it. Overall, the heavy-weighted fabrics contribute to the grounded and strong aesthetic quality.

My visual language is composed of visual and conceptual metaphors and is defined by the use of muted colours, textured fabric and form. The decay on the top is a symbol of the painfully hard work that is required to achieve a black belt in Aikido and the flowers on the pants symbolise the personal growth, development and discipline that is a result of this. The small ivory pearls visually connect the top and pants since they spread throughout the garment and are representative of growth through hardship since they require intense circumstances to form.