Costume and puppetry

Above: 'Rhino' by Megan Tetlow Walker, Below: 'Spider' by Hannah Myers.

 Above and Below: Spider from James and The Giant Peach by Hannah Myers.

Above: James by Lydia Boagey, Below: Aunt Spiker by Charlotte Livingston.

          

 Above: Natascha Allan

The first years of Edinburgh College of Art's performance costume students were given a brief to create puppets and coordinating puppeteers lycra costumes and head pieces, the results were magical. The Lycra body suits were created using dye and print techniques. Millinery skills and fabric manipulation in the head pieces and the technically accomplished puppets.  

Zoe Frewin

Continuing with a glam rock theme is the work of Zoe Frewin, 'Man Enough to be a Woman', for her Performance Costume graduate collection for Edinburgh College of Art.

"In an adaptation of Jayne County’s autobiography ,I present a musical showcasing the life of the first transexual rock icon, an artist who inspired many. We embark on the rock and roll transexual journey of Wayne becoming Jayne and the search for her true identity. The musical takes off in New York at the start of her career, in the late 1960s, and follows her troubled road to stardom." Zoe Frewin

Yan Smiley II

                                     Above: photograph by Gareth Easton

Yan Smiley's: 'A Voiceless Vault of Blue' (Above) and 'King' (Below) graduate performance costumes. 

'A Voiceless Vault of Blue', is a self devised sci-fi ballet set on a Scottish Loch side in 1670. The design takes inspiration from Scottish poetry, restrictions and warped perceptions of life within mirrored stained glass. 

" The album 'King' by Fleshgod Apocalypse, takes barbaric manipulations from a 19th century court to reflect on the poisonous nature of contemporary society, with the King representing honour and good within us all 

Above and below: Photograph of detail by Yan Smiley

Isobel Keeys

Isobel Keeys graduate collection for Performance Costume at ECA was created for Slade House by David Mitchell. The performance of this part of the show was incredibly eerie but also stunningly beautiful. 

"I took inspiration from the ‘still space’ that the twins are suspended in. it’s a place where they are both dead and alive simultaneously. I wanted to play on the idea of distorted reality as well as comparing the state that the twins are in, to pressed flowers.

                            Above: Detail by Torya Winters 

I also wanted to compare the fact that the flowers are being preserved in what resembles their alive state while actually being dead. I think this relates to what the twins have created perfectly.In the book, the author hints that colour is the hardest thing for the twins to maintain when projecting the world into the minds of their pray, so I used that idea of drained colour as my colour pallet. I wanted to only have accent hints of colour in the costumes; playing on the idea that things maybe aren’t quite what they seem, and that by adding small amounts of accent colour you brain would maybe fill in the blanks." Isobel Keeys

All images above: Hazel Terry. 

Gracie Martin

Gracie Martin's costumes for Judith Kerr's classic story, 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' were inspired by 1920's Art Deco patterns the tigers acceptability/ respectability, that enabled him to enter the home is interestingly conveyed by the use of the tie, the stripes on the chest are created using multiple ties and the pointed tie shape is then carried through into the design and repeated in the layered shoulders and mask.  

Velia Ansorg

Velia Ansorg's final presentation was designed using contemporary dance to interpret Bon Iver's 10 dEAThbREasT.
The album art inspired the digital print for the garments whilst accents to the movement are accentuated using illuminated origami elements.

Abigail King

For her degree collection Abigail King designed a site specific immersive interpretation of the 'Beauty and the Beast' by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, combining it with elements of Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber'.
The shoulders of the jacket of the beast incorporate digital prints of 'The Venus of Urbino', 1538 by Titian, which peep through the suiting fabric. The dress has a sea of embroidered eyes across the shoulders.

" The costumes draw upon fetishism and sexuality to create pieces that explore gender stereotypes, femininity and Gothicism." Abigail King 

Lucy Hutchcraft, Diwali

I was in awe of this project when it was launched at the beginning of the academic year for the third year performance costume students at ECA. The freedom, texture, vibrance and exuberance that it afforded was fantastic.
Students were asked to design costumes that would use brightly coloured and patterned sari fabrics donated by the charity Scottish Love In Action, and incorporate lighting into their designs
The work for this project launched this years Performance Costume show Lucy Hutchcraft's 'King' was one of the pieces;

"This project was so much fun. We were given the task to create a costume spectacle for the Diwali festival, which had to include lights! My costume is based on the evil King Narakasura, and legend says he was thief, so my costume is covered in lots of different textiles and fabrics and creates a lot of movement." Lucy Hutchcraft

Dayna Ali

                              Above: Photograph by Laurence Winram

Dayna Ali's degree production took Irvine Welsh's 'Marabou Stock Nightmares' as it's theme. Dayna bought it to a heightened horror and surrealism by the animation of the marabou Stork. The costume is designed to be worn back to front, with the actor patrolling the stage backwards.  The storks costume uses elements from football casuals with it's merging of football attire (all perfectly and disgustingly stained) and the mask and wings of the stork.