Modern Man_
St Joseph College_London
We embarked on a journey of defining the role of the modern man through embroidery.
Flour studio collaborated with 20 boys (age 11 to 13) and their teacher to completely transform one area of their school. Together a site-specific hand embroidered digital mosaic was created to cover all the walls and ceiling telling a story which represented their interpretation of who the modern man is. The aim was to create a contemporary space of contemplation within the school for all pupils and staff to relish.
St Joseph College asked flourStudio to develop a new body of work re-interpreting contemporary catholic values in collaboration with 20 of their most talented arts students and their art teacher. Together we questioned and investigated these notions and looked for their meaning today.
With that in mind, we tried to understand and define who is the modern man in our contemporary society.
St Joseph’s College is a catholic secondary school for boys situated in south London.
Jointly we focused on illustrating these values through two traditional catholic aesthetic narratives: tapestry and mosaic. We also explored chapels as typical spaces of contemplation rich of storytelling and narrative typologies.
Through group discussions, contextual exploration and drawing we decided that
we wanted to re-design the school stairwell as a new type of space for the school. Just as in catholic chapels we wanted to create
a space of that tells a story – a new type of story.
We wanted to transform how the space felt. We worked on many ideas to improve the space from a very ordinary school stairwell to an extraordinary place that felt unlike any other space at the school.
We embarked on a journey examining the role of the modern man through embroidery. By making together, having ideas and discussing them we realised that the modern man shares many of St Joseph attributes. The modern man, for the students, can carve his space in the word with his hard work and skills just as St Joseph did as a carpenter. The modern man should have respect for human dignity and the environment aligned with St Joseph trajectory as an immigrant. And more importantly the contemporary man should be able to love, care and have compassion as St Joseph did by loving his pregnant wife and her new born son as his own child.
The site-specific work at the school encapsulates the ideas shared between flourStudio, the school pupils and staff. Each embroidered cell made by the participants were brought together by Fabiane Lee-Perrella to tell the students story via an exceptional digitally printed embroidered mosaic. St Joseph’s stairwell is now filled with a collective narrative told by a digital tapestry that is now enjoyed by the whole school community.
Partners:
St Joseph's College
http://www.stjosephscollege.org.uk/
