Paula Dunlop
Dunlop explores the use of chance as a system for designing clothes. The deliberate staging of chance procedures to generate pattern shapes distances the designer from achieving an overly controlled outcome. Dunlop’s systems include: folding fabrics while blindfolded – dropping old toiles, pattern pieces or textile scraps (that don’t always land on the fabric completely); calling on an assistant to randomly select pattern pieces in a lottery-style process; or by a self-imposed rule such as determining that an op-shop visit on a particular day will uncover a garment that becomes a pattern.
Dunlop’s garments all incorporate experimental elements. She reworks found and new materials using a systematic methodology that synthesises tailoring and chance, or known and unknown approaches to making. Dunlop’s discoveries and intuitive responses have been woven into a practice to form systems for making in the style of Jean Arp or John Cage. She refers to her work as a kind of ‘slow’ fashion; the figure of chance protracts the process of garment construction as she moves back and forth from table-strewn pattern pieces to mannequin stand to layer and create her collections. She desires chance for the ‘order’ it creates and understands it as a form of interpretation. For Dunlop, techniques of chance and bricolage allow for works to be ‘found’ during the process of making.
2008
Gallery
Chance Blouse 2006
organic cotton, installation view, Photography: Slowlight Images, Courtesy the artist and Craft Victoria