The many hours of labour which go into an embroidered top

Original Starvation Diet T Shirt

This T shirt took me about 24 hours to embroider. I sat at home on a sofa and watched TV. I had regular breaks to go to the toilet etc and the temperature of the room was comfortable. I chose to make it as an artistic statement and I don't need to sell it to survive. Nobody watches over me and if I decided to do something else for a while I could. I wouldn't be in fear of being sacked or provoking somebodies anger if I worked too slow, fell ill or made a mistake.

2013 fashion item from well known store

This top is a 2013 fashion item from a well know store. The store where it is sold have been found to underpay their workers,(Even by that countries standards) employ children and have people working in unfair or unsafe conditions. Clothes hand finished by the companies workers have retailed for as little as at £4.00. If It took me 24 hours to hand finish my item how do they do it and make a profit?

My new idea is to do a series of performances. During each performance I will embroider a pre printed copy of the original Starvation Diet T shirt I made. I will do this, as much as possible,  under the conditions of an exploited woman from a particular country. I will ask the people commissioning the performance to pay me the wage I would get for my time if I was that woman.  Alongside each performance will be a break down of the my own income and costs of living compared with this other woman.   The performance would end when the T shirt is finished. Each performance would be titled with the name of the country it had depicted. Unlike the person finishing garments for companies I would have the luxury of taking the completed T shirts home with me. I would look to exhibit the T shirts as a series once a number of performances have been concluded.

At the moment I'm looking for galleries, charities or other organisations who would like to commission a performance and people who know those in other countries or the UK who work in the textile finishing trade and would be happy to share info on their lives with me.

Art Of Protest Exhibition at the Peoples History Museum, Manchester

Was very lucky to get selected to be part of the Art of Protest ran by Noise Festival. Showed a few of the products produced as a result of Starvation Diet Project. Good to see all the other work and meet the Noise team and Mark Thomas. www.noisefestival.com

Spoof web pages for Starvation Diet T Shirt

The idea to create an attractive spin around a product which is in many ways distasteful. It happens every day. Can you tell which websites each of them is a parody of?

Starvation Diet T Shirt Photo Shoot

Created a Starvation Diet T Shirt. It is created using a stich called rice stich on a mass produced T shirt from Bangladesh. It shows the outline of a starving woman aged 37. The signs of starvation/malnutrition being the extended belly, ribs, reduced height and general decreased body mass. I took the T shirt on a photo shoot.