DUAS Newsletter: January 2023
Welcome to the January edition of the DUAS Loop!
What’s On
Hello all and welcome back for Epiphany term! We have some exciting events in store for you this month which I will list below but please don’t forget about our Tuesday Life Drawing and Thursday Sessions. As always, please check the Instagram pages @dulifedrawing and @duthursdaysessions for more details and updates.
As for our collaboration events…
Finding Sanctuary in the Archives
Wednesday 11 January, 2-3pm
at 5 the College
Find out more about the Cathedral Archive and view pieces related to this years Student Art Prize theme, Sanctuary. From 14th Century petitions asking for refuge to threats for giving sanctuary to criminals, to a creative interpretation in fabric of the Cathedral sanctuary knocker itself.
Sign up here.
Objects, Materials & Memories
Tuesday 24 January, 4-6pm
at Palace Green Library
In this workshop participants will experiment with sculpting, casting and assemblage techniques. They will use small personal objects as inspiration and create mixed-media 3D artworks. We will consider how certain objects, materials and 3D processes can evoke a sense of memory and nostalgia.
Sign up here.
Art Social with Sarah Stamp
Wednesday 1 February, 4-6pm
at the Oriental Museum
Join artist Sarah stamp for a paper collage, conversation and creative writing workshop. Suitable for all abilities and levels of experience with making and being creative. It will be an informal social environment where participants can have a go at being creative in a safe and friendly space.
Sign up here.
Artistic Insight
Due to an increased academic pressure for me this term, I am going to be condensing my two previous sections of ‘What’s In’ and ‘Who’s About’ into ‘Artistic Insight’ where I will continue to give an insight in to the art world each month. This could be on a local level or more globally.
For my insight this month, I am focussing on the life of the pioneering Dame Vivienne Westwood who's death hit the fashion world like a ton of bricks on 29th December 2022…
Born on 8th April 1941, Westwood’s childhood was remarkably ordinary. Parents Gordon and Dora Swire were of a working-class background with Gordon being employed as a storekeeper in an aircraft factory during the Second World War and a greengrocer previously. Her love for creating wearable items came during her time as a primary-school teacher as she created her own jewellery and sold it on a stall on Portobello Road. In 1962, she married her first husband Derek Westwood, for which she made her own wedding dress.
However, it wasn’t until she met her second husband Malcolm McLaren who became the manager of the punk band the Sex Pistols that her clothing designs garnered interest. Her distinctive style came to define the punk era with experiments with textures and deconstructing garments becoming hallmarks of the fashions created. Much of this was displayed for sale at her and McLaren’s co-managed shop on King’s Road, SEX.
During the 1980s, Westwood and McLaren expanded their horizons and created fashion collections to be broadcast to the media and international buyers. These included Pirate (1981), Savages (1982) Punkature (1982) and Witches (1983).
Watch some of these early shows here…
Savages – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3xHcai4_s0
Punkature - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miMkdjDMmKg
Westwood dubbed this period in her designing repertoire the ‘New Romantic Era’ as it can be said that she refined her designs in line with views of higher fashion. She was acknowledged in publications like Tatler though for more revolutionary reasons than might be expected. In 1989 she appeared on the cover of Tatler dressed as the Prime Minister Margret Thatcher in a suit that had been ordered for the politician but not yet delivered. The cover bore the caption “This woman was once a punk” and is now included in The Guardian’s list of the best ever UK magazine covers.
Westwood continued her ideals in to the 2000s, being welcomed into the century with a DBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours of 2006. It is during this period that her public persona as an activist and her brand’s mounting success seem to come at odds with one another. On the one hand, her sales are boosted by the 2003 Sex and the City film adaptation, in which Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah-Jessica Parker) wears a Vivienne Westwood dress to marry Mr. Big (Chris Noth) and, by the end of 2015, there are 63 stores under her name worldwide in cities including London, New York and Paris. But, on the other, she creates the Active Resistance to Propaganda manifesto which deals with the pursuit of art in relation to climate change and in 2017 she publicly endorses the Labour Party’s political campaigns because of its emphasis on the distribution of wealth. In a 2007 interview stated that “I don't feel comfortable defending my clothes. But if you've got the money to afford them, then buy something from me. Just don't buy too much” in response to claims of the lack of consistency between her activism and the consumerist way in which her brand seemed to be growing.
In 2021, she undertook one of her last big commissions by designing an audio-visual billboard to be displayed in Piccadilly Circus, London, to commemorate her 80th birthday. It brought viewers’ attention to climate change with its call to arms “I have a plan 2 save the World. Capitalism is a war economy + war is the biggest polluter, therefore Stop War + change economy 2 fair distribution of wealth at the same time: NO MANS LAND. Let's be clear, U + I can't stop war just like that. But we can stop arms production + that would halt climate change cc + financial Crash. Long term this will stop war”. It is clear that her dedication to activism was present until her final years and, unfortunately, on 29th December 2022 she died, aged 81, at her London home in Clapham.
An icon, she will he missed.
Follow this link to a post by @samyoukilis to see some of his footage of her later in life, really capturing her personality https://www.instagram.com/p/CmxJZeounyF/
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