Ovalhouse Theatre

Really happy to be part of the Ovalhouse Theatre Adult Company Scenography programme. We spent several months working collaboratively to explore narrative, atmosphere and public interaction, using simple materials.

Here are just a few of our experiments, using inexpensive materials (paper, cardboard, plastic waste, and yarn), and other found objects.

The project culminiated in a final public display in the Ovalhouse foyer. Each artist created a pieced based on common themes (urbanisation, housing, displacement, human rights and environmental issues). My contribution, a collection of Textile Turds (knitted from handmade yarns made from old garments), explored fast fashion and over-consumerism, devouring natural resources, then excreting it as textile waste and pollution.

Although most of the pieces were made individually - I really enjoyed how they interacted and came together to create a whole.

Textile Turds

The collection of Textile Turds examines the increasing problem of textile waste – to ask who pays the cost of fast fashion?

Globally, the textile industry is one of the greatest polluters, leaching hazardous chemicals into the environment and producing over 1.2 billion tons of green house gases a year. The problem grows, as our consumption of fashion increases - in the UK alone, we spent £52.7bn on 1.13 million tons of clothes, of which 300 tons (27%) will go to landfill or be incinerated.

The desire for cheap clothes comes at a heavy price. Brands keen to keep their profits high, award contracts to the factory able to make garments at the lowest cost. Cotton producers and factory workers become expendable, as wages are slashed and their lives put in jeopardy due to dangerous working conditions.

Here is a video of the my pieces arranged around the display...