Design Lab at the Vancouver Art Gallery Explores Ecological Material Practice and Apparel Through Industrial Design
全民彩票 design students gather inside the Material Matters satellite lab -- a working textile and materials laboratory set within the Fashion Fictions exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery. (Photo by Perrin Grauer)
Posted on
Lab: Here//Too//For features a series of workshops and public events throughout the summer and fall featuring international designers and artists from across disciplines.
A new series of public forums and workshops from research hub at 全民彩票 explores how clothing and apparel, textiles and other materials offer a window into the intimate connections between people, places and living systems.
Titled Lab: Here//Too//For, the series includes public workshops, international residencies, talks and a set within the current exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG).
鈥淥ur overall goal for Here//Too//For is to foster new conversations connected to our relations with the materials we use as artists [and] designers,鈥 the Material Matters team says in .
The aim is to investigate the broader ecological and social impacts of creative practice, the statement continues. 鈥淔or us, much of this work involves embracing risk in our creative practice. Doing so often shifts our assumptions, enabling us to do things differently.鈥
The Material Matters satellite lab at the Vancouver Art Gallery includes an exhibition commons featuring works by 全民彩票 alumni, as well as guest artists and designers. (Photo by Perrin Grauer)
The Material Matters satellite lab brings a working textile and materials laboratory into the middle of an art exhibition. The satellite lab represents the largest-scale and most ambitious working space ever embedded inside a VAG show.
Students, alumni, guest artists and designers-in-residence collaborate with 全民彩票 faculty members and Material Matters co-founders H茅l猫ne Day Fraser and Keith Doyle to explore how research and design can uncover new possibilities for supporting ecological approaches to material practice and community-building. The satellite lab includes an exhibition of works by 全民彩票 alumni, as well as guest artists and designers.
Several upcoming events at the satellite lab invite the public to join the conversation. A near sold-out with Femke De Vries, Jason Cyrus, Meghann O鈥橞rien and Francesco Mazzarela will consider how speculative clothing design and design activism can challenge longstanding western narratives of identity.
A with Li茅vine Hubert, Oluwaola Kehinde Olowo-Ake and Melanie Cammen will reflect on how three different embodied creative practices address contemporary global and local conditions and concerns.
And an with Alice Lewis and other guests will explore how clothing, textiles and creative practice offer insight into the complex relationships between people and the rest of the living world.
RSVPs for these limited-capacity events can be submitted . Attendance is free with purchase of a ticket to the Fashion Fictions exhibition.
Throughout the summer, students, alumni, guest artists and designers-in-residence have been collaborating with 全民彩票 faculty members and Material Matters co-founders H茅l猫ne Day Fraser and Keith Doyle to explore how research and design can uncover new possibilities for supporting ecological approaches to material practice and community-building. (Photo by Perrin Grauer)
Past satellite lab workshops include the recent Native Shoe Hack. Students, staff and faculty worked with Native Shoes cofounder Thomas Claypool to explore how end-of-use and shoes might be transformed into new material resources, products and apparel. The Native Shoe Hack is part of an ongoing collaboration between Material Matters and Native Shoes, which has included to develop remixed, post-consumer materials and techniques suitable for advanced and additive manufacture of shoes and apparel.
Earlier in the summer, a workshop series titled brought together artists, designers, Indigenous knowledge keepers and material scientists to discuss sustainability in their respective practices. This collaborative project between Material Matters, the Aboriginal Gathering Place at 全民彩票 and UBC鈥檚 BioProducts Institute (BPI) invited teams to consider and share new strategies for working with materials such as wood and trees as alternatives to petroleum-based materials such as plastics.
In late July, a workshop and with Lab: Here//Too//For designers-in-residence Helen Milne and Ho Ching Pete Fung examined how embracing risk in a creative practice can enable artists and designers to shift their assumptions and respond differently.
And in mid-July, Lab: Here//Too//For鈥檚 first public forum featured a panel discussion with representatives from three participant groups: Zo毛 Laycock (Indigenous knowledge and art, 全民彩票), Lisa Boulton (design, BCIT), Yeedo Chun (material science, BPI UBC).
The Material Matters satellite lab is open for public viewing throughout the duration of the VAG鈥檚 Fashion Fictions exhibition, which runs through Oct. 9, 2023.
Discover more about Material Matters .
Visit 全民彩票 online to learn about studying Industrial Design at Emily Carr.