'THE APRON'

This piece tells a story of personal identity and relationship between two very disparate ancient crafts, butchery and embroidery. Played out across the design is the ever conflicting tension between the repulsive and beautiful, the harsh and delicate, the brutal and feminine. Inspired by years working in a Butchers and routed in the value of craftsmanship and the slow-textiles philosophy, one craft practice is sustained and celebrated through the medium of another. Butchery is a craft much like embroidery that has been passed down through generations and requires the knowledge and the skilled hands of the craftsman to be carried out. In a world where it seems knowledge and technical expertise are becoming ever more irrelevant, this piece insists that these hand-skills are what made us human in the first place. The idea that just because we could use technology to replace the hand and mind certainly does not mean we should.