On a Wednesday afternoon we had the Artist Lucy Orta come to Wimbledon to tell us about Studio ORTA. A studio based in an old paper factory in France and ran by partners Lucy and Jorge Orta.
Together Lucy and Gorge make a fantastic force for creative and clever artworks. The projects are often design led, and have a great deal of imagination and flair when it comes to the final outcome of each piece. Studio ORTA work with many different curators and communities. They are very much interested in bringing people together to engage with each other as well be an extended part of an ongoing large- scale artwork.
It was especially good for me to attend this lecture with Lucy, as not only did she discuss her portfolio work at great length, but also revealed the way in which ORTA studios gathers information around a project and has a running database on sources and drawings, all of which play a great importance in working towards a finished project that has a positive impact on the communities and ties it builds it as it goes along.
I became very interested in the characters they designed for a project in Italy involving the history of a traditional tailoring factory. Artworks were then made to tell a new narrative about the tailor trade and its history.
I myself have an ambition to make my own character pieces for a future project. I would be very keen to go and work for Lucy and Jorge to gain more insight in how this work is made and pick up the skill of making clothing/wearable items for my own artwork
For the last part of the talk Lucy tlked about the last big project they worked on which took place in Nuit Blanche, Calgary, Canada.
‘Each musician dons a mask, in the form of a creature, and an icon tailcoat tailored from reclaimed felt blankets. Each bears the inscriptions of past warriors and homeless wanderers. These foreboding masked represent the spirits of the once abundant wildlife across the Albertan plains: Bison, Moose, wapiti, wolves, grizzly bears, and eagles. The music stands illuminate a graphic score, the conductor guides the masked animal musicians ( the musicians play a set of wood carved bird tweeters) and the performance commences.’
http://www.studio-orta.com/en/news
I very much enjoyed the work of Studio ORTA and would be very keen to have the opportunity to work alongside a project one day in the future. I aspire to have the energy and ambition to make work that reaches out and connects to so many others through the work.