esdesign Textile Design Award 2015 - Elise Brimer

This years' esdesign textile design award recipient is the super talented Elise Brimer at Massey University.We think it is so important to nurture and support the budding talent in New Zealand's design industry across all formats, so this esdesign prize is just one way that we feel we can congratulate awesome work like Elise's!

Here's a little about her collection, 'Common Thread' ;

In this collection, I wanted to encapsulate the energetic unity between the people of various cultures who call New Zealand home. New Zealand’s demographic is compiled of people from all areas of the world. Whether we are a citizen by birth or have migrated here - as equals we share the commonality of having a New Zealand identity. To communicate this I explored textile processes that are habitual to the five most numerous ethnicities that make up New Zealand’s ethnic demographic - Maori, Chinese, Samoan, Indian and New Zealand European. I experimented with Maori flax weaving, Chinese embroidery, Samoan tapa cloth processes, Indian block printing and French tapestry weaving and identified motifs which became key visual resources. These motifs were abstracted to avoid developing imagery that could offend people to whom these motifs have great cultural significance to. I have titled my collection Common Thread to infer the commonalities we share as New Zealanders whilst referencing my exploration and incorporation of motifs from textile processes primarily involving cloth and thread.