Paula Dunlop
Cooperative Fashion
Cooperative Fashion 1 and 2
(with Madeleine King)
2008
Time-lapse video
“A successful or productive design/creative process is often assumed to be one that follows an efficient or direct path—either from the inspiration to the product, or from the creative problem to the solution.
But sometimes having an idea, planning the outcome and then translating the idea into a finished object of design or art isn't quite so straightforward, direct or simple.
Indeed, we feel that most design and art (or at least, the stuff untouched by the carefully rationalised and streamlined processes of commercial manufacture) is created via a multitude of indirect, exploratory and sometimes rambling paths between problem and solution, or inspiration and product. And, of course, it often needn't start with a sketch or even an inspired idea.
As practitioners we are both heartened and intimidated to know that there is never a single solution and scarcely even a single problem. What excites us about the creative process is that the design/art object is never a lone outcome—rather, the creative process produces a multitude of constructive outcomes, including the knowledge and enjoyment of the process itself.
We're interested in processes that aren't necessarily efficient, rationalised or elegant. The processes we enjoy and find creatively sustaining can be irrational, uncontrolled and even arbitrary—processes that open up as many problems as they do solutions."
Making Response 1-6
2008
Digital print and mixed media on calico
90cm x 90cm
Six works on calico, created through collage and the re-working of past works, part of an investigation into the tension between process and product within improvised design practices.
Chance and Bricolage garments
2008
Organic cotton and reclaimed fabrics
(Exhibition view, How You Make It, Craft Victoria, Melbourne)
Chance and Bricolage garments
2006
Organic cotton and reclaimed fabrics
A collection of garments developed alongside research into chance, bricolage and improvisation.
Experimentation with different procedures—lottery pattern selection, randomised creation of shapes through blindfolded cutting, re-making garments donated by friends—were deployed to seek a way toward an experientially interesting and creatively sustaining design process. An aversion to sketching or planning a decisive end product lead to a material-lead process of draping chance-generated shapes onto the dress form.