Cass student wins national bursary for project responding to her grandmother’s relocation to a nursing home.
Jodie Barnacle-Best, a third year student on BA Textile design at The Cass, has won a £500 award in the Textile Society student bursary competition. She is one of seven who have shared the overall bursary this year. Her project 'Hold space for me' uses images from a beloved house, lost and changed by the move of her grandmother to a nursing home, shaping space, personal, political and emotional.
Jodie on ‘Hold space for me’
‘Hold space for me’ is a fashion knit project based on the concept of living spaces, politically and personally. Exploring the idea of ‘needing a space of one’s own’ has led me to the investigation of my grandparents’ home - a space which I find comforting, safe and nostalgic. My grandma’s decline due to dementia has influenced my exploration of how living space changes (moving into a nursing home) and the adaptation of mental space, holding space for each other emotionally during grieving. Comfort and familiarity felt through spaces and the people who occupy them is what gives this project its title.
Transience and overlapping memories within familial spaces is embodied through the sheer see-through knits within the collection evoking this sense of fading or disappearing. Focusing on elements of my grandparents’ home which feel symbolic to the space has enabled me to re-imagine these aspects into wearable knits. I intend to push this further through finishing experimentations – over-washing, over brushing and also natural dyeing the finished samples to create stains reminiscent of a well-loved space within the context of a fashion knitwear piece.
You can see more of Jodie’s work on her Never Lacking Colour instagram account and there is an interview with her (conducted during her first year on the course).
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