This bachelor's thesis explores the relationship between abstract comics, textile design, and spatial installation. The theoretical section examines abstract comics, which served as the conceptual foundation for understanding sequential narration in my work. The chapter on installation art discusses the importance of the viewer within an installation, relating to how the viewer constructs its complete sequential composition only through movement around the installation. The investigation of the meditative practice of textiles helped me understand the calming effects of weaving. Case studies of the textile art practices of Sheila Hicks and Louise Bourgeois inspired my interpretation of drawings and textile patterns in the artist's book. I also examined the origins of the Anti-Form art movement, which informed my understanding of the changing forms of my constructions.
The practical section is based on intuitive digital drawing, created while travelling in a moving vehicle, where the vibrations of the vehicle co-shaped the drawing gesture. The resulting forms were recreated as handwoven textile miniatures. These textile pieces are accompanied by an artist's book, produced using Japanese stab binding, which connects drawings and textile patterns into a sequential narrative through the principles of comic panels and the intervals between them. Selected motifs were transferred onto three fabrics of varying weave densities using digital machine embroidery. The miniature woven textiles were then installed within four spatial rod-frame structures. In addition, a larger, independent woven textile made from natural plant fibres was produced on the loom.
The outcome of the project is a spatial installation composed of four modules and an independent textile piece, exploring the relationship between three-dimensional geometric objects and two-dimensional organic textile forms. The spatial arrangement establishes new visual relationships between the modules and connects them into a spatial sequential composition that draws on the principles of comic storytelling.
The thesis demonstrates that the spatial arrangement of textile elements can assume the role of sequential narration, with the three-dimensional installation extending the two-dimensional elements of abstract comics into space.
|