Unpick

A public workshop and installation in the deconstruction and reassembly of second-hand garments. Using unpicking as a tool for dialogue we explored stories of dress, material culture, archive, memory and waste.

Research Lab, Konstfack, Stockholm, 2017.

Canadian textile scholar Dorothy K. Burnham’s book Cut My Cote (1973) analyzes and demonstrates the construction of historic garments. I adapted her method of deconstruction by unpicking a man’s shirt to examine its origins and craftsmanship. This act became a way to explore the hidden stories held within clothing and critique the hidden labour and material processes involved in their creation.

In the gallery setting, I invited the public to join in a workshop that used unpicking as a tool for dialogue, with the physical process of disassembly provoking discussions on the value of textiles, waste, consumption, care, memory and personal history. Participants dismantled and reassembled second-hand garments reimagining clothing in new ways, without limitations of re-wearability.

The workshop encourages participants to engage critically with clothing production and practices, offering a platform to explore social, cultural and craft perspectives on materials and making through object- and oral history methods.

Unpick was subsequently presented at the conference Cloth Cultures: Legacies of Dorothy K. Burnham, held at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, 2017. Since 2018, Unpick has been developed and delivered as a workshop for communication and design students at Linnaeus University, Sweden. We use physical and conceptual approaches of unpicking to interrogate and visualise object origins, material stories and systems of production.

With thanks to participants Ida Brattmo, Hannah Clarkson, Matilda Dominique, Anna Forsberg, Hanna Hansdotter, Petra Holmberg, Kristin Larsson, Olof Marsja, Lucy Martin, Hannah Moores, Ingela Nilsson, Pernilla Rozenberg, Moa Sjöstedt, and others, names unknown.

Marie O’Connor

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