MEDIA RELEASE: Hey Big Splendour!

Images: designs by Cara Smith,  Sarah Murdoch,and Abby Campbell 

Designs by Textile Design and Silversmithing & Jewellery students from the GSA, which respond to the iconography of the celebrated Armada portrait of Queen Elizabeth displayed in The Queen’s House (Royal Museums Greenwich), will be showcased as part of an event tomorrow, Friday 28 June 2018.

The presentation will take place after an afternoon symposium at The Queen’s House in which the use of textile and jewellery to convey messages around power and politics by 16th and 17th century queens will be explored. Speakers include jewellery historian and exhibition curator Dr Beatriz Chadour-Sampson, and Dr Thea Stevens, lecturer in Design History & Theory at The Glasgow School of Art.

“The Armada portrait of Queen Elizabeth I summaries the hopes and aspirations of the state as an imperial power, but was also designed to be a spectacle of female power and majesty calculated to inspire awe and wonder,” writes Matilda Pye, National Outreach curator, Royal Museums Greenwich in a publication that will be launched at the event.

Image: design by Asia Przytarskaphotographed at Stirling Castle

Matilda Pye worked with Slivia Weidenbach of the GSA’s Silversmithing and Jewellery department to create a brief for a cross departmental collaboration within the School of Design at the GSA. The students were encouraged to explore the visual and material culture of the 16th and 17th centuries and debate their contemporary relevancy. The students also examined how their work could be fashioned and displayed on the body, and how historical propaganda was translated into symbolism in portraits. The students looked at portraits of queens including Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots and Anne of Denmark – Queen consort to James VI of Scotland / James I of England who commissioned Inigo Jones to design The Queen’s House where the Splendour event will be staged.

Writing of the outcomes of the project in the Splendour publication Dr Thea Stevens of the GSA says: “The students have taken what they have gleaned from historical research and injected an energy from the superbly abject qualities of a choker evoking the moment of Mary Queen of Scot’s decapitation to textile samples that make smallpox pustules entrancing.”

Outcomes of the student collaborations were photographed in the historical setting of Stirling castle on garments made by GSA Fashion Design students  These images together with text by Matilda Pye (RMG), Thea Stevens (the GSA) and Helen McCormack (the GSA) are brought together in the Splendour publication. 

For further information on the Splendour event visit 

https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/splendour-adornment-bodies-gender-early-modern-europe

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For further information and high resolution images of the student designs contact:

Lesley Booth
0779414474

press@gsa.ac.uk

or Royal Museums Press Office at press@rmg.co.uk