Bayeux Tapestry

Bayeux Tapestry shows the story of the conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy in 1066. This 70 metre long tapestry can be visited at the museum in France. The story being told in the tapestry starts in 1064 when the King of England (Edward the Confessor), tells his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson to travel to Normandy in order to offer his cousin William the succession to the English throne. The end of the embroidery is missing but the story ends with the  Anglo-Saxons fleeing at the end of the Battle of Hastings in October 1066. The tapestry consists of 58 scenes, 626 characters and 202 horses.

Artist References

Melissa Zexter has a background in photography but has also loved physical art making techniques such as drawing, painting and mosaic making. In 1999, she began combining sewing with her photography where she went on an artists’ residency program in the Catskill Mountains of New York and a fellow artist taught her how to make handmade paper. She then bought some new thread and needle to then start sewing photos on her handmade paper, the sewn drawings were of anonymous figures. I also made pillows and sewed images onto them. Soon after, she started sewing into her larger photographs which were also of anonymous figures and the sewing acted as a map or grid over the figures.

Jose Romussi is an imaginative sewer. He isn’t a designer but rather a talented artist who studies landscapes instead of the arts. Romussi uses black and white photos to then sew with hundreds of colourful threads creating contrasting embroidered pieces. In his most recent work, Jose Romussi collects images from old fashion magazines and creates elaborate mysterious images in which the face is hidden under different types of embroidery structures. When the viewer sees the image they almost disregard the original image and focus on his unique embroidery and use of vibrant colours. This creates an aesthetic concept of beauty with a static image with the thread creating movement in the piece.

Workshop

In this workshop with Yulia Makeyeva we used photos and words from the People Make Jersey exhibition. This was used to create a textile photography work relating to our current project of identity and community. Our project focuses on fashion throughout the times so I wanted to create something using an old photo and the use of new vibrant colours such as Jose Romussi does in his photography pieces. With my textile piece I decided to use a photo from the Corpus Christi parade in 1913 then cut it up in a jigsaw piece type of way to have joined together with wool as a symbolic way of joining Jersey together with the old and new which relates back to our topic of using old fashion and the prediction of the future. I wanted to use bright colours to contrast against the black and white photo to help it stand out better. To sew the background fabric I used a similar colouring as green and orange are next to each other on the colour wheel so this won’t completely drown of the photo but still will add some colour to my piece. I then proceeded to add a flower at the bottom right corner to add more structure to the piece.