Live Project- British Art Medal Society

My current studio work is a live project to create 2 medals to be entered into the British Art Medal Society’s Student Medal Project. The brief is to make 2 hand-sized medals, incorporating a traditional and digital element in some way, based around the theme of the Icon vs. the Iconoclast.

My initial idea was to approach the theme from a material angle, so I started looking into fabric manipulation and the idea of fabric contrasting the typical hard bronze medal.

This is an initial idea where the fabric is stitched and manipulated on the front and the workings on the back are exposed with the threads loose. I took this idea and began experimenting with fabric manipulation techniques.

Thinking about the idea of a contrast between hard and soft, I looked into changing the fabrics’ pliable qualities by making them ceramic. I made up some examples in muslin as it’s an absorbent material and dipped them in clay slip. They hold their shape but soak up the slip into the fibres so that when they’re fired, the fabric burns away leaving shape and texture of the fabric in the clay.

I researched ceramic artist Rachel Boxnboim, who makes textile porcelain-ware by creating the object out of fabric and then filling it with slip so that it absorbs it. She then pours away the excess, leaving a thin layer of slip, ready for firing. These are pieces from her Alice- Porcelain tea-ware collection.

To see how much detail the clay would pick up, I also made up some crochet samples with wool.

Once fired I will be looking into colours and glazes to perhaps pick up some of the details the fabric has left behind.