Weaving Futures: Week 7 | Josephine Ortega

lr-yellow-close-up-josephine-ortega-1Weaving Futures is an exhibition at London Transport Museum highlighting the importance of woven textile design to the London Transport system. The exhibition explores the process and making of digital woven textiles, as part of the Museums’, Designology season.

Each week, visitors will be able to see invited designers/artists in residence in the Designology studio, who will be working on a project brief and interacting with a weaver in their residency dates. The weavers will be interpreting the residents work live into digital woven textile prototypes and final works on a state-of-the-art TC2 digital jacquard loom. 

Week  7  features:  Josephine Ortega
Residency dates: 5th – 7th Jan 2017
Activity Days: 6th & 7th Jan 2017

Born in Nottingham, UK, Josephine Ortega is a Textile Designer who recently graduated  from Central Saint Martins. During her degree she specialised in Woven Textiles, exploring construction of yarn through the loom. Throughout her final year, Ortega began to explore alternative methods of construction, which meant her designs developed off loom and she began to explore a traditional tug-making technique that became the basis for her final major project.

Her recent  collection, ‘Grid’ investigated the perception of ‘comfort’, culminating in textile proposals for transport seating.
In order to define the abstract notion of ‘comfort’, Ortega
 collected people’s testaments on where and when they feel at their most comfortable.

Compiling responses and accompanying photography of the individuals’ homes, the designer created a visualisation of comfort, ultimately offering her a palette of colour, pattern and yarn choice with which to work.
Wanting to challenge the boundaries of weight, density and scale throughout transport fabrics, Ortega explored construction methods, material investigation and dyeing processes throughout her work, resulting in bespoke, hand crafted designs.

lr-image-josephine-ortegaOther residents participating in the Weaving Futures season include: Assemble, Beatwoven, Philippa Brock, Camira, Central Saint Martins, BA Textile students, Samuel Dempsey, Linda Florence, Gainsborough Weaving Company, Eleanor Pritchard, Rare Thread : aka Kirsty McDougall & Laura Miles, Josephine Ortega, Ismini Samanidou, Studio Houndstooth: Jo Pierce, Takram & Priti Veja
Resident artists and designers have been invited to respond to a project brief; exploring the role of textiles in modern transport now and in the future. They will focus on ‘untapped’ sources of data generated by, or helpful to, the transport system. Their responses will then be interpreted into woven textiles, live for museum visitors.

Creative responses may span from future speculations on data capture and its textile use, to new methods of digitising human interactions, to creative interpretations and visualisations of existing TfL data sets.

Weaving Futures is jointly Curated by Philippa Brock and Samuel Plant Dempsey. The weavers for the season are Rosie Green & Hanna Vinlöf Nylen

Weaving Futures Sponsors: Camira, Digital Weave Norway, Pointcarre, The Worshipful Company of Weavers

Text and images: with thanks to Josephine Ortega

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