Talent Talks: Belinda Gredig
Belinda Gredig explores an often overlooked fibre, Nettle. Considered both a traditionally healing plant and a pest, Gredig uses over-twisted hand spun German nettle yarn to hand-weave forms that resist uniformity. She re-connects to the ancestry of textile and fashion through drawing parallels between glass and textile practices, where the movements and gestures of making shine brightly in the outcomes.
Could you please introduce yourself?
I’m a recent MA graduate from The Swedish School of Textiles in Borås in Textile Design specialising in weaving. I’m a practice-based researcher working across fashion and textiles with an artistic and material-driven approach towards fashioning other forms. Working with glass became part of my work during my undergraduate studies at Central Saint Martins when studying Fashion Design with Knitwear.
Having graduated recently, how do you look back on your studies?
Looking back at the last two years, my MA research has given me the time to really dive into a topic that I had started with during the pandemic and to be able to go through several development stages before presenting an “end” result. I tend to see the final pieces as a prologue to the next work. While sitting at the spinning wheel or loom, it gave me the opportunity to explore different ways of thinking-making, through manoeuvring between disciplines, working from fibre towards form – handweaving-to-form. Being able to work in parallel with glass, was a huge privilege that enabled me to have a conversation between the different elements in my work, so that the developments could grow in the same thought processes.
Could you please tell us something about your graduation collection/project?
My work is about making with a material that travels through different stages and forms shaped on the loom, a meeting between nettle and glass to craft another space between disciplinary boundaries curated in the context of the Cabinet of Curiosities. The underrepresented, here nettle and glass, become the driving forces that converge not only as metaphorical representation but as fluid modulation with agency. Here the maker and her line are spinning, winding, spooling, threading, interlacing, tensioning, binding, melting, flowing, draping their way towards form. The thinking-with nettle emphasises her characteristics through hand-spun energised (over-twisted) yarn of German-grown nettle. Threads, when woven on the hand-loom, resist the conventional structural behaviour and rectangular shape of a piece of cloth. These forms are draped on the loom through manoeuvres that hack the system weft by weft. The directness of shaping in flamework is also translated in the weave process. A wearable configuration offers space for bodily experience within this journey aiming to recapture its affinity with fashion, where textile and fashion meet in a liminal space before entering a new abode. Hand-shaped glass elements act as counterparts to the weaves, to make clear hidden tensions and create counter-forces. Here, the burning and clarifying force of nettle transforms into a vitreous state through flamework, which is an underrepresented technique within glasswork.
Which materials, techniques, programmes and/or applications are you mostly interested in?
I tend to be drawn to the underrepresented, natural and taken for granted materials and techniques to give them a voice. I love challenging myself through trying to find ways of transition between unusual material combinations and techniques to create a fluid conversation between them. Once I know a programme/system, I look for ways to sabotage it.
The exhibition you are a part of looks into meaning of regeneration. What does regeneration mean to you and your work?
Regeneration, for me, means to grow into a state of healing away from patterns that are no longer useful for us. On this basis, I would like to start by giving my gratitude to my uncle, a botanist specialising in the cosmic energies of healing plants, who let me dive into a non human world as a child. The symbiotic approach to looking at plants is what I have started to restore with this body of work. Nettle is usually classified as either healing or pest plant, while I work in an environment where I’m classified as either textiles or fashion designer. These restrictions have become both foundation and motivation for my work. I set myself the task, to imagine a space where nettle and I can meet and take action in more nuanced ways and give her (nettle) a voice in a world where textiles become stronger and tell fashion what to do.
Regeneration means change: working towards form without a preconceived result; this made me curious but it was also frightening. In order to continue, I had to learn to trust the process and my ability to know when to take decisions and how long to stay playful. This way of working has helped me to unlearn past patterns. The performative aspect in the pieces has been a new path for me which I would like to explore further in the future, to extend my new knowledge of textile’s affinity with fashion and to better define the crafted space we have started to discover.
How do you perceive the meaning and importance of community within the fashion field?
From farm to fashion there are many people involved who are rarely credited or given a voice. In order to give all who are involved a feeling of community, it is important that they are included in the creative process, with different knowledges respected and listened to. We have to move away from working in hierarchical ways towards a more horizontal inclusivity. It’a also important to adopt less human-centred perspectives.
How do you view the future of fashion? And your own role therein?
I see my practice as a fibre-textile gesture that resists conventional ways of working, which are limited by static identities and standardised acts within one discipline. Instead, it embraces multiplicities of identities, allowing us to think otherwise - to find new meanings and to re-connect to the ancestry of textile and fashion, which is essential for the future of fashion.
