Part of the POPFest Showcase featured a display of the POPLab.
We could not invite everyone to the POPLab at Goldsmiths, so we brought as much of the POPLab to the River Rooms as possible.
The aim was to showcase some of our practice research process that takes place behind the scenes. The final pieces performed at the POPFest Showcase only tell some of the story. The POP project is focused on thick theoretically informed hands-on and object oriented knowledge making. So, it was essential to show the many tools and tactics, materials and mess involved in our scholarship.
The POPFest Studio Showcase featured:
A central table collection of sewing machines, thread, materials, patents and colourful toiles.
There were boards displaying our process from paper to drawings, iterative multi-scaled toiles to finished garments:
There were railings of calico toiles with patents pinned onto each design and on the far wall we projected a series of still images taken in the POP Lab over the last few years
Mannequins were dressed in some of the patented toiles
We played two of our short films on a large computer screen. People were invited to sit and put on headphones and watch either “Women On The Move” or “I, Martha Gowans”
We encouraged people to touch and play with the pieces. In the POP project, nothing is as it seems on the surface. It’s important to understand how things work by opening, dismantling, transforming, converting them.
