Gavin Vaughan

Talking BODY MANIPULATION With GAVIN VAUGHAN

Gaving Vaughan (@houseofmesmer on IG) is a very talented young designer, who uses slime, embroidery, taxidermy, and combines his visual skills with science to create his very elaborate and signature work. In this interview we talk about how he begins a project and what inspires him to keep moving forward. He is working on projects which bring the future closer to us, with the idea of home DNA altering kits, and smart organisms embedded into his embroidery work using slime; and by merging the traditional methods of goldwork and embellishment with DNA alterations, it brings the concept closer to today’s world.

Hi Gavin! Glad to have you today and thank you for joining us for our November issue at GoldFoil Magazine. How are you today?

I am good, thank you. And yourself?

I am great, thank you. For those of our audience who have not come across your work, tell us what do you do?

My work covers across three categories which are - embroidery, sex, and science. My work is a blur between them three in a crossover. It explores the human body in different ways. Sometimes it is embellishing the body or editing the body in some form.

So you can create different sorts of garments and embellishments and that sort of stuff but at the same time, you do biohacking in a way as well, to edit and manipulate the body?

Yes, I use the body as a canvas, as a material, as a paint. The body is the whole work unlike in an artwork where you see everything on the canvas, I use the body as a paintbrush and it all becomes an art. I love research, and I came across this phrase a few years ago called a morgue file, which sounds quite dark but it is basically a dead art, or a dead idea. So I kind of log things in, and I have an Evernote where I just put everything that I like in, so it is all logged into a morgue file where I am able to later investigate the ‘’dead art’’.

Looking at your work, I always wondered, how do you go about your projects? Do you start of by doing research first, or do you simply come across a fabric or an object that you just start playing around with and start exploring? How do you approach your work, as your projects are very different and interesting, some of them are crazy scientific, while others are very creative?

Okay, so that is very interesting. It is kind of like a scrapbook in a sense, where you can go back to later and use the idea.

Yes, similarly, however in this morgue file, I keep scientific files and papers, so it feels a bit more academia based than craft.

That makes sense. So tell me more about your so I was very confused what was that about.

I won a competition for a gallery where I submitted an idea of combining traditional craft, and I had always been interested in symbiotic relationships between different species and how they work together, for them to live. I was looking for how we could do this with craft. The craft that I did was for goldwork embroidery and a lot of the gold-work technique are nowadays extinct, like to create the material, it’s extinct as a craft to do. So I was combining biology with this extinct crafts and I decided to use slime mould, which is a very intelligent form of life because you can control the way it grows, and this way I

embroidery work, I saw you growing slime,

wanted to create something more interesting.

You have created a very interesting balance between nature, and life, and death. Your idea always starts off with something very dark and grim, but then it blossoms into something beautiful, for instance you make these skulls with embroidery and they usually symbolise death, but then you manage to strike and show it in a beautiful way, and it is kind of mindblowing.

Yes, this is what my work has evolved in to become, I embroider with taxidermy as well. I create my own taxidermy which is embellished with crystals and goldwork. I don’t think they can be seen as dark things but depends on how it is done, that is my sort of niche - I take a dark object and try to make it ‘’bright’’ in a way, and colourful. I think it is just the style I have developed over time and it is a style I kind of like. Gavin Vaughan @houseofmesmer

Yea, you definitely have a very interesting style. Looking over the years at some of the things you have created.

It is definitely my style. I would look at a bug, let’s say a bee, check the biology of it and the aesthetics and what visuals I can come up with, and at the same time look at Dior’s new looks. That way then I look for ways I can connect the two and kind of style it in a way that fits in.

Okay, that ties really well with my next question - Do you follow fashion trends in that sense, or do you go and look for scientific discoveries and drugs developed to form your concept? Or do you end up just merging the two together?

Yes, I constantly flip through fashion magazines, and browse through Instagram, following and checking fashion week, but I kind of prefer keeping up with what other designers are doing, not the major fashion houses but just new graduates and niche collectives. I am a bit more interested in more of the on the fringe society, my work very much explores that - I have worked with biohackers, drag queens; you know these are the people who were and still are on what is so called the fringe society, I think they are more interesting to explore

I think you are right, there is so much more to learn from them, than there is from the already established houses, they are less polished and they are willing to take risks and make mistakes.

It is that, but also it is the fact that overtime they lose their styling and what the house was actually meant to be. But it is also about the experimentation, it is kind of sad to see how these big established houses lack that nowadays.

Gavin Vaughan @houseofmesmer