After all my good intentions, I haven't writted a single blog all week. So here goes it for the monster recap.

The journey started in Liverpool. I sat apprehensively in a little café having just applied my drag queen make-up. Then came my debut in the Cotton exchange, when I donned my dress properly for the first time.

In the Cotton Exchange we met Albert, the international cotton master, who seemed deeply underwhelmed by my endeavour at first. Three hours later, he was genuinely emotional and we said a teary goodbye over a cup of Yorkshire and a hobnob.

After setting up by the port I was approached by some office workers on their fag break…

"Are you getting married love?"

(in a pretentious voice) " Ha ha NO actually I am travelling along the old cotton trading route from Liverpool to Manchester, making a costume from the donations people give me along the way. Do you have anything you want to add to my frock?"

"Oh aye! Come 'ed… Back in a tick we'll run and grab sommat from upstairs."
(5 mins later)

"Here you go love can you sew this in. It's Terry's appointment card..he passed away last week."

"He was a sound lad Terry yeah."

Moving onto the evening parade. We walked past a seedy looking biker bar and my companion Ricardo the Lionheart goaded me to enter. The woman outside said: "Tell me its for a bet??!!"
"You won't make it out of there in one piece, I tell yuh"

2 hours later I was being serenaded by steve and was adorned with axe necklaces and guitar stickers. And as Buzz burnt a fag out in the palm of his hand, he declared to my right hand documentin' man "mind over matter!", eyeballing him affectionately.

DAY 2
THE canal trip. I piled onto the ship with a few hundred old giffers in tow. Handing me freshly laundered handkerchiefs to stitch and doddering around me constantly. Four hours in and my fake smile was starting to falter, but a few kind ladies taught me how to sew and brian the blue badge guide man was a restless pillar of support.

DAY 3
This morning at Styal mill I became at one with the museum and found myself being treated like a National Trust attraction du jour. On entering the mill one of the workers mistook me for a haunting vision of the past and pissed his pants. Later on some American tourists were deeply disappointed when I failed to deliver a blow by blow account of the Mill's history and only wanted to talk about my own mission. Later on still, I was doing my Timmy Mallet with great success, as the wee scampeteers flocked to expand my gown with their crazy doodles and shit.

CASTLEFIELDS and CANAL st
Hung out for a while, getting seriously mardy with my glamorous documenting assistant. After grumping around for a while I had a snooze under a bridge and dangled me tootsies over the canal for some fake looking pictures to be taken.

Canal St provided the usual plethora of talent. Starting with none other than the mighty Raymondo himself. Who stinking of an over the top Jimmy Saville, crowned me with his goldie lookin chain.
Later on my smile held fast as two scallywags tried to nick my bag and then gifted me with bike locks they'd recently robbed…the little sweeties.
Then a magical Rainbow man caught my eye and I gave chase until he handed over his boa bright.

LAST DAY – in the Rainy city

Sat in Albert Square in the pissing rain of Manchester

and a gaudily coloured

Wedding guest came running up to ask " Is it arrrGHHt???" " Actually (pretentious voice returns) I'm travelling along the blah-dee-blah oikin blah… Gimme yer coat bitch!"

Big ups to Richard Stacey my photographing space monkey and all the lovely lovely public I met along my way. I love you all but won't be doing it again.

Not posted much on here recently but..alas i have succombed to the myspace ting and set one up for my final proj.

i'm gonna write blogs during my performance on there so you can keep track of me hopefully...check i'm still alive etc if yer can be ersed.

Check: www.myspace.com/manchester_sur_mer

Adieu X

Exploring deconstructing and transforming images at Glastonbury 2007...many different identities lurking within one person.

3 easy steps from yuppie to glasto muppetry:

Dodgy vid to soon come...

Backyard Bazaar

I managed to drag my sorry self out of bed early sunday morning, pack me suitcase full of dodgy merch and trug on down to Brick Lane to set up a stall for the day. it was the first time thay had had the market in this particular part of Brick lane so was really very quiet compared to the other markets there.

Harking back to a time when something of the individual was retained in production and when a market stall could reflect the pecularity of the person behind it, i set up my miniature display.

I traded a total of three bags (cheers Ming!) and a piece of gold paper torn off my display. I also managed to swap one bag for 2 pairs of wiKKed earrings!!! This was actually fairly successfull as by 3pm some of us hadn't sold a bean AND I met lots of intriguing market peeps..well worth losing my voice for.

...oh yes there's more

This is a tad belated i know, but in response to the feedback i received during the presentation, i have come to realise that i was neglecting the perception and involvement of the spectator in some way by enforcing my own aesthetic, my own gear, my own mess onto them. This was a removal from my original intentions of something which was open to transformation and outside embellishment. Not just my own remnants of time and place being mapped out but rather incorporating the traces and debris of the exchanges along the way. A point of reference has been Sontag's ideas of travel as accumulation.

I am also very conscious of how the work is communicating the theory to the audience. The arguably tentative and patchy explorations of last term led to incoherency and puzzlement. Rather than getting confused in the revelry and mischief, which i nonetheless believe to be an important means of communication, i want the spectator to draw something out and engage with some of the debates informing the work.

Trailer Designs

Below are some designs for a trailer, which i had intended to set up in the car park of Wimbledon college. The set up lies somewhere between a rag and bone cart and a first aid truck. Like a morphing unit, where you go to seek transformation, i would offer a 'tailoring' service on a one to one level. the aim being to revive the dialogue and exchange, which at one time was so very vital between dressmaker and client, whilst using the resources and imagination available to me to create spontaneous, cobbled together images, hopefully reflective of the conversation which has taken place.

i am still not sure if i will use this idea at all this year. For my scratch, i am thinking of turning my focus to the pilgrimage/journey idea.Yess i'm still writing through a fog, but will hopefully draw up a plan of action soon..

Yellow Pedlar Pics

Yellow Pedlar Dress

Here are some designs and pictures of a dress i have been making out of yellow sandbags, which i acquired after a spot of drunken skip-raiding. The idea of it is to incorporate function in order to enable autonomy and create a sort of one man band, whilst simultaneously highlighting certain social imbalances. I have been experimenting with the idea of sewing in holdalls for the pedlar to store their knockoff goods in or a cart which is wheeled along within the dress. Other possibilities i may explore are creating tunnels within the dress to allow others to burrow in and have multiple openings in order to facilitate more than one wearer.


The material itself conjures up notions of construction and refuge and links with the idea of building a defense around the body. I am therefore treating clothing as a means of providing the intimacy and protection found in a building. With the performance pictures shown i was trying to thing about the bags as containers which could also double up as a shelter of sorts.

The link to the pedlar film on youtube is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml55c7d9-hc

Some Bassline Circus Pics

Stitches that Travel

Workshop Showing: Pedlar Film

For the second workshop i showed a short film of me selling fake handbags on the streets of London and Manchester. I was wearing a dress made from colourful plastic bags and gaffer tape and the hand bags were versions of designer handbags, but fabricated also from plastic bags, food wrappers, tape etc. Through making these bags i have become wrapped up in the character of the street pedlar and the spaces which he/she inhabits. It is these junctures such as ports, coastal towns, the egalitarian space of the beach, which interest me, as i have been thinking about washed up cultural detritus, (whether objects or people) and the process of piecing together of disparate fragments, resulting in the creation of new cultural meanings.

The feedback from the rest of the group was positive and some of the things that arose were the idea of trade, which although i had not originally given much attention to, i think is pertinent to my research, particularly if i set up the market stall. People also mentioned as interesting: the relationships i had formed on the street, the contradictory nature of the costume itself being at once rubbishy, yet something almost regal/graceful about it as it allowed me to glide around the streets and Magda reminded me to return to Bakhtin, as she claimed there to be something carnivalesque about the whole thing.

Below are some fuzzy stills taken from the film...