Lottie McCrindell

Hi, I’m Lottie and I studied English Literature at Cambridge before completing a masters in Printed Textiles here at UCA. At Cambridge, I wrote essays on textiles in a range of works, from ‘The Willow Song as Lyrical Garment in Shakespeare’s Othello’ to ‘The Metaphor of Skin as Textile in Women’s Contemporary Poetry’. I became especially interested in textiles’ relationship to language, memory, and women’s history. In summer 2020, I spent time in south Brittany at my grandmother’s house and encountered the archive of my great-grandfather, Jacques Derrey, a professional French artist from the twentieth century. Feeling it a shame that much of this beautiful material was gathering dust, I applied to UCA with a vision of using it to create printed textile designs.

The course has helped me to realise several of my passions – art, fashion, and poetry – and how they all intersect. Coming from an English degree, it has been wonderful to use my research skills for a visual outcome. I have enjoyed doing oral history interviews with my grandmother, discovering fascinating artists, and reading archive theory.

Rooted in family history and a consideration of the male gaze, The Weight of the Archive communicates the highly sensory nature of my engagement with Derrey’s archive, and explores the archive’s order and disorder, absences and gaps, layers and traces, decay and ageing, surprise and chance discoveries, and digital-material duality.

If you have any questions, please get in contact – I would love to hear from you:

Instagram: @derreybylottie

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.derreybylottie.com