Textiles Archives | The Open College of the Arts

In conversation with: Áine Byrne

Áine Katrina Byrne is a Textile Artist and Designer originally from Ireland and now based in London. After Completing her MA at the RCA, Áine spent time working as a designer in India, before returning to London to continue her work within the field of textile design. Áine woven designs both digitally and by hand for the fashion industry, supplying high end clients and the high street. Áine is based in Hackney Wick Space studio and works as a lecturer at CSVPA.

Ask the librarian

What is plagiarism? Plagiarism means deliberately or accidentally using someone else’s work or ideas as if they were your own. Work means any intellectual output, and typically includes text, data, images, sound or performance and includes material downloaded from electronic sources. Deliberately plagiarising work whilst you are at OCA can have very serious consequences, which is why it’s important to follow good academic practices and to reference your work properly.

Breaking into the boys’ club

For centuries, women have fought against adversity to pursue artistic careers in what was (and arguably still is) a man’s world. They have suffered the humiliation of having their works passed off under someone else’s name, of being barred access to training, of struggling to do what men have taken for granted (simply represent themselves on canvas or celluloid) and of having their pieces relegated to dark corners of museum and gallery storerooms.

OCA & SANE: A new partnership

We are very pleased to announce that we are working in partnership with the leading mental health charity SANE to support mental health. We are working together to deliver SANE’s new Creative Awards Scheme, a new initiative to enable people suffering from mental health or caring for people with mental health issues to access the visual arts and harness their creativity.

Art in the Anthropocene

The word Anthropocene combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time. Whilst the term is widely used across many discourses it is important to recognise that the term has spread with great speed often dislodging familiar terms like nature and environment. The notion of the Anthropocene raises important questions that concern the sustainability of the planet to support human life.

Lisbon’s vibrant and optimistic art scene.

If you are heading to Portugal this summer, take some time to look around Lisbon’s vibrant art scene. This is art in the more liberal sense. Music, ceramics, architecture, visual arts, food culture, moving image, textiles- all are on show and in current conversation.

Study event review: Remake / Remodel

It was great to see such liberated and stimulating interplay between students and the work they were making. Unfamiliar drawing methods were explored including drawing with lengths of cane, using coloured tapes to collage with and stitching with a domestic sewing machine to create a variety of textured marks and lines. As the session progressed spontaneous collaborations began to develop between students where one would work over another’s drawing or drawings were developed together to produce an innovative dialogue of marks.

Wood, a material for textiles

Wood may be one of the oldest and most commonplace materials, long used in African, Pre-Columbian, and Oceanic artwork to create groundbreaking forms, but it’s full of surprises.

Study event: OCA North

Join the next meeting of OCA North at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester on the 15 June with OCA tutor Rachel Forster.

Study event: OCA East of England

Come and join us for a talk about “The Influence of Curation on the Creative Arts” with OCA tutor Andrea Norrington on Saturday 27 July.