[ Debbie Smyth ] tape measure project

Young Irish artist Debbie Smyth has created a series of objects by weaving tape measures.

Smyth was one of the winners of Dezeen’s competition to show work at Talent Zone at Tent London last month, where she also showed her Pins & Thread project. See our earlier story.

Debbie, who graduated in textile design this year, uses techniques like knitting, knotting, basket making and origami. The following is from Debbie Smyth:

Debbie Smyth’s work rises to the challenge of employing a variety of skills and techniques to transform unusual and unorthodox materials and objects into playful yet sophisticated pieces. Employing an array of mechanisms, she folds, collapses, inflates and interlocks her materials to transform two dimensional lines and planes into three-dimensional shapes and space.

The designs are the result of detailed explorations both in terms of visual inspirations and material qualities. The processes and mechanisms are seldom hidden but openly displayed to reveal the story of their transformation.

 

Drawing upon traditional techniques, which include knitting, knotting, basket making and origami, combined with exciting new technologies such as laser welding, she conjures up structures that reside on the imagined boundary between sculpture and constructed textiles.

 

Precise folds, calculated angles and measured lengths combine in multiples of interlocking knots to transform the familiar builder’s tape measure into an alien three-dimensional form.

Myriad pins and lines of thread are given a new lease of life as floating linear structures. Each one plotted and measured accurately to depict the hated obtrusion of the electricity pylon which themselves are floating lines in space. Suspended interlocking stitched and printed units are mechanisms of movement and change as they play with power of pattern to emerge as light and shadow.

The newly created forms can then take on a life of their own, as happy decorating 21st century interiors as featuring in fashion shoots; unique gifts at one scale, gallery installations at another.