Jayy Swift/Interactive Arts

The west wing store room Platt Hall

Dress and photo by Jayy Swift

“Summarising my first project, we we’re asked to consider an idea on Mary Greg’s collection could be exhibited through the gallery, considering the way that children could interact and be engaged in the museum. The curators had suggested consideration of the space to the project, which wasn’t visible nor accessible to the public.

Platt Hall being a costume & dress museum, my work would relate so much to this concept, being that Fashion alongside Photography inspire me greatly.   The Concept of ‘Hide & Seek” was an straight forward game which they would be able to engage on. This idea worked well alongside the idea of this negative space Mary Greg has toward the collection and the space, which it’s stored in.  This idea of the objects always being hidden waiting to be found.

 Through the use of pockets covered in detail and embellishment, I wanted to hide Mary’s collection in them, or photographs of the objects in a lot safe aspect where the children can pick up and touch. Inspired modern designers, I wanted my ideas to be over the top, walking around Platt hall you’ll notice how many stairs they are in the building. With stairs theres just this negative space constantly there, the idea of the dress being created through negativity of Mary Greg and how it could infect the room’s space, taking up all the negativity, like it was feeding the dress. Alongside hundreds of thousands of pockets hidden amongst endless meters of fabric, containing my imagery of the collection.

 The interaction to me, is personal. Containing this constant struggle of inspiration. With couture the constant battle of energy and passion to every single hand stitch, The amount of control you have as the designer with the fabric and how to manipulate it to perfection.”

Jayy Swift

Stephanie Bennett/Interactive Arts

Stephanie's display in the Link Gallery at MMU

Detail of paper dress

“Mary Greg was a lady who enjoyed collecting everyday household objects. Her collections extended through the period of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

After being inspired by one of Mary Greg’s collections, present with in Platt Hall, Manchester, I have begun a project that aims to highlight a glimpse of her unique and vast collections. An installation that I created has been documented within these photographs that you can see. This installation highlights an introduction to this project.

My project began by documenting some of Mary Greg’s collections through the use of photography. Within the installation I displayed these photographs within antique frames, arranged upon the walls and shelves. The array of found objects and hand-made pieces on display held a historical reference and resembled the fragile and significant collections of Mary Greg. Numerous fascinating objects were encapsulated within the intricate hand-made display cabinets and hand-painted boxes.

The delicate, decorative dress, hung on display, was created after I became particularly intrigued by the work of textile artist, Jennifer Collier.

My ambition when creating this installation was for viewers to enjoy having a look at what was on display. As I continue within this project I aim to create objects that are suitable for viewers to pick up and hold, therefore allowing viewers to experience how precious and exquisite they feel, as well as highlighting the nature of Mary Greg’s collections.”

Stephanie Bennett

Kirsty Round/Interactive Arts

Detail of Kirsty's Mary Greg Quilt

‘After hearing about the Mary Greg project and reading the letters between Mary and Mr Batho, I wanted to bring those letters and their friendship to life again. After an inspiring find of Mary’s own Patchworks, I decided to turn her letters into patchworks, creating a wall hanging and picking out words that I felt highlighted certain people, her kindness and character. As an added extra, and for a little fun, I also made some Mary Greg cushions, holding her ‘logo’ that I stumbled upon creating during experimentations. Alongside this I also created some recordings of the letters using my mums voice for Mary and my Aunties partner for Mr Batho.’

Kirsty Round

Grace Harvey /Interactive Arts

Details of the interior of the bird house.

Bird house/Dolls house

Grace Harvey created a wonderful Bird House  for the Platt Hall project ,which contains a number of  bird puns and references such as “Tweetabix” (click on the photo to enlarge and find them yourself) , also note the attic full of boxes reminiscent of  Platt Hall’s  wonderful attic store room. Hazel

“The sense of discovery I had when exploring the collection at Platt Hall was extremely inspiring. The bird house is a response to both this and the two items that completely fascinated me from Mary’s collection – her beautiful dolls house and the whimsical frog diorama that sits alongside it at Manchester Art Gallery. I have designed and brought life to a miniature house that I already owned, where by opening up the doors uncovers a family of birds inside, just going about normal day-to-day life.”

Grace Harvey

Margaux Illescas/Interactive Arts

Twenty Interactive Arts students from MMU visited Platt Hall before Easter and came up with ideas for a proposed event at Platt Hall in Autumn 2012. Margaux worked on ideas for creating a keep sake/promotional object based on the keys in Mary Greg’s collection. I will be blogging the results during the next few weeks. Hazel

“The Mary Greg Project

For this project I have chosen to focus my work on “the way to promote the Event”.

Seeing the Mary Greg key collection at Manchester Art Gallery I decided to use it in order to find an original, creative and effective way to promote this future event. Rather than making simple paper flyers I drew the same shapes as the original collection onto Illustrator in order to go to the laser cutter and make my own keys. The keys are between 10 and 15cms long but the size can be reduced. There are different prototypes in plastic and in wood. I engraved the Mary Greg website onto the keys so once people get the flyer they can directly go on the website and see what this is about. I added a catch phrase on some keys as well to attract people: “Would you like to know where this key gives you access to?”

I believe this could be a nice way to promote the event and that people would keep the flyer rather than throw it away.”

Margaux Illescas

Button Missing Tags

The start of a new set of work inspired by Mary Greg.  Ways to indicate damage or missing buttons on garments..instead of trying to disguise the damage I want to  make it the focus of attention. Maybe to remind the wearer to mend it, or maybe to “celebrate” the fact it needs mending. I am planning on making a batch of these in various shapes and forms..The dresses in the Platt Hall collection have some wonderful delicate repairs. (see next post.)

Hazel

Time to Think

Ready to use ,threaded needles from Woolworths

Needle cases from Platt Hall

I feel very sad that I have neglected this blog for so long. The students did a wonderful show for the Platt Hall project before Xmas and due to circumstances beyond our control the project has lain dormant since. I have been thinking a lot about ways to try and keep this project going, and I finally have a little time in my workshop to look at my own response to Mary’s collection One thing I have been doing as often as I can are watercolour paintings of my collection (will add photos later), It feels right to sit and quietly paint in watercolours, I was very inspired by Mary Greg’s Nature Diaries. I am also looking a “mending kits” and  needle cases..or damage repair kits. Will add some tests to the blog at the end of the week.

Behind the scenes at Platt Hall

Behind the scenes at Platt Hall

Just before Xmas 21 students from the Interactive Arts course at MMU pitched their ideas to Liz for the Platt Hall exhibition planned for Autumn 2012. (Photos of the work, which was exhibited in the Link Gallery can be seen by clicking on the link in the previous posting.).  I have been thinking about the students responses, and a number of things stand out. Firstly how excited the students were to get access to areas usually out of bounds, some have tried to find ways to recreate this feeling for others. Being allowed to hold delicate objects, and open boxes which have been closed for years. I was also amazed how many of the students read the copies of the letters between Mr Batho and Mary which I left  out for them in the studio, some know as much, or maybe even more about Mary than I do now, and we talk about her like an old friend. This project just gets richer and proves to me that keeping  Mary Greg’s collection together is so important.

Student work at the Link Gallery

Manchester Metropolitan University Interactive Arts students were asked to take part in a project to come up with ideas to show off the Mary Greg Collection at Platt Hall in Manchester in 2012. Students pitched their ideas to staff from Manchester Art Gallery on Tuesday 14 December. Read more about the project at the Link Gallery Blog.

Table Runner 2

This project has been my main focus recently as my collaboration with weaver Ismini Samanidou intensifies!  Recent developments include some further refinements to the clay palette based on the initial woven samples made by Ismini on the jacquard loom.  I particularly liked the section woven from digital images of some of the spoons in the collection and have been working the clay to try and capture these characteristics.

Bygones spoon, worn and distorted through endless stirring

Bygones spoon with the initials of an unknown family

Cloth samples being woven on the jacquard loom

Detail of Bygones spoon woven into cloth

Translating the woven cloth back into clay

Exploring overlays of stained clay

clay colour sample responding to woven cloth

We have also been playing with ways in which text from the archive letters may be brought in to the composition.  In one of the letters there is a handwritten inventory of spoons sent by Mary to the collection.  We have been playing around with somehow combining this alongside images of spoons from the collection into the cloth.

Digitally overlaying the spoon inventory over the spoon

spoon inventory on computer screen as part of the designing and weaving process

woven spoon inventory

It’s all looking very promising but there are still a number of refinements to be made.  We are still trying to achieve greater subtlety and richness.  The cloth samples to date are still a bit too graphic visually. We want to work on that and move toward a more abstract outcome, at least in parts.  Physically the cloth is a little too thin and mean so we want to explore further combinations of yarns to yield a thicker fabric with a richer texture.  We also want to warm up the colour palette a touch and perhaps introduce some creams, golds to reflect the colour palette of the range of metal spoons such as pewter and brass.  So still plenty to do but all very exciting!  Sharon