PRINT

I started to look at the hospital gown for inspiration. Yes, they are quite boring. They often have a bland half drop motif pattern such as squares or flowers. I wanted to take the boring motif element of these patterns and turn it into something acidic.

After a couple different designs, I decided to move on from it. This was because, yet again, I felt as if I wasn't providing an answer/solution to my political issue. This was incredibly frustrating and time wasting! I had to start a fresh in order to move on.

I then had a brain wave. I wanted to approach the issue from a little girls point of view as it would have been at the time of the abuse.

I worked with my younger cousin to really get a sense of the innocence inside her head, untainted and imaginative. The ideal pre-teen.

Her favourite thing to do is draw, so I asked her to take over a page in my sketchbook to assess how her mind unravelled. This was such an enlightening process as it gave me various print ideas. I let her draw free hand and also made a couple of requests. I asked her to draw a cigar butt. Of course, she didn't what that was. so I showed her a picture of Saville smoking one. She immediately interpreted the cigar as a troll snorkel, employing that Saville, to her, resembled a troll.

From this initial experimentation, I took to photoshop to develop the ideas digitally. Unfortunately, I felt that my cousin's drawing weren't strong enough on their own. They didn't impact on the answer that I was trying to give.

I combined some ideas from the act of rape development that I did and also looked back at my mood board. I merged the imagery of ripped fabric and the rose tinted view of pre-teen girls overlaid onto my cousin's drawings to produce print that I call "Smoke Away My Innocence".

I feel like this print has been successful as it's very simple, yet still delivers an impact. I asked among my peers for feedback and they all came back positive. They liked the fact that it portrayed vulnerability through that child's drawing but possessed the power and impact of a confident woman.

Overall, I am really happy with how the print has developed and what it represents. I will have to be vary with designing now as I want to showcase this print clearly so that it still delivers the message that was intended.

GRAPHIC DRAPING

Taking a new turn down the road of development, I decided to look into the physical act of rape and tried to portray it in a draping session. I decided to use mesh and netting for this as it represents bridal fabrics that relate to the victims in the sense that their virginities were taken away Saville, therefore they would never be 'pure' (an old fashioned view) for their husband. 

I feel like I achieved a successful outcome. The fabrics actually worked really well in response to the stress and manipulation that I was putting it under. It was interesting to create this, a woman's vision of being raped, onto a man's body. It somewhat feels embarrassing and out of place. Which makes me feel that I am on the way to creating something that the victims will get a sense of justice from. 

From using these fabrics, I really would like to use them in a final piece as the have conceptual reasons for being used. I want to experiment more with them in terms of fabric manipulation to really bring out their full potential. 

NAUGHTY DOCTORS

As a result of my research I looked into the mental health wards airport more hospital during the years of which Jimmy Saville was helping out on the ward. I wanted to look into the white coat specifically as we see it as a blanket of trust. Doctors hold our lives in their hands essentially, so for this kind of issue to happen it's quite destructive of that trust. This is why I decided to play around with the white jacket and deconstruct it and see what unique shapes I can come up with. It was quite interesting actually because when I deconstructed the coats, it made the doctors look like scary aliens. The same thing I imagine would've been felt by the girls being attacked by Jimmy. 

I then designed from my favourite shapes that I created. I really did like the designs I produced however I don't feel like that was the right avenue to go down in order to design from to truly answer the victims the plea justice. I feel like I just bought up really bad memories for them. 

This was a slight setback as I didn't really want to use these ideas for further for development as they felt tainted. 

This process wasn't totally wasted though. I thought of looking into the physical act of rape and watched a few interviews with his victims and how they felt during and after the whole incident happened. One woman quoted to have felt constantly suffocated and strangled after as she couldn't be herself and feel at ease. Looking back through my designs, I got a sense of construction and lack of comfort due to the controlled shapes and placements. So I'll be taking them through to development in a different sense of displaying a struggle. 

POLITICAL FASHION

For this project I was really stuck on what subject to do it on. I had many ideas, but I didn't know how stable they would be to develop through the whole process. And then bam it hit me. I was reading newspaper and a story came up on a senior member of the royal family having committed a sex offence against an underage girl. This sort of issue really affects me mainly because it's just so morally wrong that it makes my blood cuddle. Looking more into this issue I specifically wanted to focus on the Jimmy Saville scandal. I feel is if his victims didn't get any justice whatsoever due to the fact that he did die before any of this information had been released. I really want to produce an end result that will in some way give justice to the victims and give them a platform to express their hatred. 

The more I researched into this topic the more I was disgusted with it. In particular his abuse he carried out in hospitals especially on mental wards in Broadmoor hospital. 

I then created a mood board to summarize the research that I've done. This included images of hospital gowns, newspaper headlines, and also the concept of transparency as he committed most of his crimes within plain sight of the public eye. I feel this is going to help me progress to the next stage of developing and testing ideas. 

I feel that I have really connected with this project in the sense that I am emotionally motivated to really disgrace Jimmy Saville for what he's done.