NIA WINSTANLEY

Looking at the concept of maximalism in its broadest sense led me to investigate hoarding for my final collection. Superficially, it suggests a celebration of excess, but it can also be a burden. This research was very personal to me as it was formed by my family’s way of dealing with my late father’s belongings. By taking my own hoard of shiny things and images of my father’s tickets and football fanzines and printing them onto fabrics and PVC sequins, I am attempting to contain my hoarding whilst taking his with me. Despite the morbidness of the inspiration, this collection is focussed on visual and textural excess.

My collection also reflects on how our increasingly nomadic lifestyles require new ways of organising and containing our innate hoarding instinct. Inspired by the display of clutter as art, such as in Song Dong’s exhibit of his mother’s hoard Waste Not, I am using regular pattern structures, like fishnet, mock ribs and grids, to communicate this tension between control and chaos. The contradiction between wanting to preserve throwaway items developed into the idea of ‘elevating trash’ – encasing sequins in knitted metallic pockets and fashioning them into form- fitting, glamorous garments which question the boundaries of ‘good’ taste.