Fashion and Sustainability Forum 2018
MA Fashion Design Interim Show, The Unbroken White
A plastic-free aisle in supermarkets will not deliver a plastic-free isle.
From George Monbiot’s comments in The Guardian on Theresa May’s 25 Year Environmental Plan to David Attenborough’s plea in Blue Planet II for plastic consumption to be cut to save our oceans and marine life, plastic is a hot topic at the moment.
In this setting,Winchester School of Art (WSA) is hosting the 3rd Fashion and Sustainability Forum on 7 March 2018. Alongside this is the opening of the MA Fashion Design and Textile Design Interim Exhibitions which highlight zero-waste pattern cutting and sustainable design.
WSA Library has a range of books and resources that examine issues of sustainability in art, design, and fashion. To help disseminate these holdings, students have taken keywords from our collections and put together this map to engage all those participating in the events at WSA.
To tie into the themes raised in the Forum and MA exhibitions, we have taken this opportunity to delve deeper into our special collections to curate an exhibition of items from our Artists’ Book Collection that reflect on the uses and misuses of plastic.
The Artists’ Book Collection contains many items that address plastics and sustainability and these take on a variety of forms and approaches. SALTandSHAW (Paul Salt and Susan Shaw) are well represented in our collection and we have selected their ‘Milliard: Beach Drifting’ as one of the items in the exhibition. The book is bound in recycled plastic, and waste from discarded plastic bottles found and collected from a beach are grated and then made into small coloured shapes on the edges of each of the pages. When the book is closed a rainbow is revealed, perhaps offering some hope for the future.
‘You are the Future’ by Clement Fusil
On the theme of marine life, ex WSA student Clement Fusil, as part of his Graphic Arts degree, chose to look at environmental issues and produced this playful and colourful children’s book, ‘You are the Future’.
John Bently has been producing artists’ books since 1984 and we have a complete collection of his work in the Library. Liver & Lights No.14: a book of discarded things, produced in 1992 with a 2nd edition in 1994 is “a book for all the orphans adandoned by fate and war”. Its cover is made up of found objects from the streets of Lewisham and Deptford, many of which are discarded plastics.
Works from the Artists’ Book Collection by Imi Maufe, Salt and Shaw and John Bently
The exhibition at Winchester School of Art Library opens on 7 March 2018 and runs until 16 March 2018. To make an appointment to view any of the items from the Artists’ Book Collection please contact wsaenqs@soton.ac.uk
The MA Interim shows run from 8-15 March 2018 at WSA. Further details here.