Newstead Abbey

Newstead Abbey

Our first project assignment for the first year fine art degree is “lace legacy”.we have been lucky enough to be asked to produce artwork for a public exhibition taking place at Newstead Abbey starting the 15th October. 

Newstead Abbey is a Historic building that has had many uses from being an Augustinian priory, the ancestral home of Lord Byron the poet, Museum and now acting as the home to Nottingham Museums Lace archive. We took a trip to the Abbey and viewed the lace archive, viewed our exhibition space, and explored the extensive grounds guided by the very kind workers and volunteers.

The pieces are set out among a few of the Abbeys many rooms in a way that shows of the lace works function in a home setting in a very effective way. I found the exhibition to be a very immersive experience, as you walk through the many preserved, cozy rooms you are transported back to a time when lace held a very important place and role within the home life , fashion and prestige. I personally had never really thought of lace as anything more than a fabric or an embellishment but this exhibition really highlighted the both positive and negative impact of the role lace and it’s creation played on so many peoples individual life’s and history’s.

  

After viewing the exhibition we walked the grounds, taking photographs and collecting foliage that we would use later that day to create Photograms and Cyanotypes. A temporary dark room was created to make photograms of the collected foliage, a process I had not tried or heard of before but thoroughly enjoyed. We used photographic dark room paper with the foliage on under an enlarger and when exposed to light for a matter of seconds, then treated in chemicals it created a photogram of the foliage. We also created cyanotypes, this was a process I had seen before but never attempted. We were given paper treated with a type of emulsion, layered our foliage on top, and then when we exposed the pieces to the sun, it left behind a pattern on the paper where the foliage blocked the sun. These were both interesting processes and I was impressed with how the work turned out for a first go.

  

-My photogram result and process 

-My cyanotype result 

-My Photographs from the grounds: