PROCESS
Hundreds of items of clothing were recovered from beaches around Britain over a period of ten years. Specimens include complete items of apparel, pieces of material torn and degraded - down to a single stitch and group of microfibres. Two hundred and two items of clothing were selected for this project to show the diversity of clothing waste.
Damp clothing was arranged in detailed compositions similar to Atkins presentations of algae specimens, with some left as they were found on the shoreline, to form their own display. The clothing ‘specimens’ were individually pressed and dried in a Victorian cast iron book press, to resemble the flat blades and fonds of marine algae. Unlike translucent algae, the clothing was often too thick to print from directly and was scanned to create a negative so that more detail could be recorded (this is *noted at the beginning of the book). All ’specimens’ were printed same-size, in parallel with Atkins way of working where she carefully arranged her specimens to fit within the page.
Cyanotype solution was applied to the paper using pieces of the recovered synthetic clothing itself. Solution soaked material brushed onto the paper, further connects the issue of plastic waste with the garment represented. The intention being that the final cyanotype print contains actual microplastic fibres itself, reinforcing the issue of waste clothing at sea.
*Note, “The difficulty of making...” original text by Atkins referred to the difficulty of making accurate drawings of minute objects of algae. Barker’s newly created text refers to the difficulty of the thickness of specimens…”
