Exploration of new processes and products for knitted textiles

摘要

Contemporary knitting over the past decade has experienced a recent resurgence in cultural interest and technical exploration. This research project aims to identify, through personal practice, the implications of knitting as undefined, removed from the boundaries of product. It is the dissolving of the lines between design, art and craft and exploring the domestically machine knitted textile via the use of materials and the inherent qualities of the fabric which are the driving factors of this research. It is through this exploration that my personal and creative process is diversified. The traditional connotations of knitting are historical, social and cultural, in particular hand knitting. Childhood memories of mothers and grandmothers knitting out of necessity, for clothing, often evoke feelings of safety, warmth and comfort. This familiarity of the looped stitches and understanding of the knit as garment binds knitting to fashion. Industrial knitting process, as scale of stitch is reduced, begins to remove this familiarity and creates an anonymity of structure and process, for example jersey knits used for t-shirts. This instant recognition for knitting as clothing is part of the design process where-by knitted fabrics work in unison with product. It is this boundary that has defined my professional practice designing for knitwear. This research involves a more experimental and fluid approach to producing the textile, considering the qualities and potential of the structure as something to celebrate in its own form. Designers such as Issey Miyake, Hussein Chalayan and the artist Rosmarie Trockel have been influential in taking fashion concepts into the gallery, often knitted. This movement of making conceptual and political statements, especially in the case of the industrially knitted pieces by Trockel, was a step to question the traditional and feminist perceptions of knitting and using the process as a material to create art. While these exhibitions explored the knitted textile in the form of fashion garment, the importance of diversifying the knitted cloth and displaying conceptual pieces is a major influence on this research. Also the more recent exhibition 'Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting', (Museum of Arts & Design New York 2007), has allowed for a reinvigorated forum for constructed textiles to be viewed as object, new product or purely as spatial explorations of structure. The impact of these ideas has allowed for the consideration of the textile being stripped back further and to remove the instant connot ation of product application. Exploration of materials, knitted structures and the manipulation of fabric without the constraints of identified product is the impetus of this project. The evolution of the outcomes is instrumental to the reactions of fibres, stitch and interplays of positive and negative space, while suggestions of product are accidental and created by the knitted form as it is removed from the machine. A personal interest in exploiting the knitted structures potential to possess transparency and opacity, become sculptural and changeable by hand have influenced the choices of material and stitch combination. This experimentation has informed my personal practice and the involved process of making.