Compelled to Collect

Pushing my self-initiated work forward I have been thinking a lot and doing a lot of research. Ive been looking at this sense of ‘belonging’ and identity that is created by the ‘football fan.’ And how we as fans attach value to objects in relation to football. People collect badges, programmes, ticket stubs as a tactile representation and reminder of a memory (myself included). There is also a lot of oneupmanship I’ve realised within football, not only between rival fans; songs are sung back and forth and flags and scarves are worn and displayed as a expression of allegiance to ‘your’ club. Also there is rivalry between fans of the same club, in the sense that people boast, about how many games they have seen, how they’ve been to the ends of the earth to see their team. Programmes, scarves, tickets, badges and allsorts of other tangiable objects are kept or worn as something similar to a 'badge of honour.'

With all these thoughts rattling round my head, I went up in the loft and had a look in a few of the umpteen boxes of football bits and bobs we have stuffed up there (my Dad was once an even more dedicated collector than I am). The first collection I came across was a set of Arsenal bobble hats; apparently they were all the rage in the eighties. They really are cool though, some amazing colours and some great varied designs, a couple of which have been keeping my head warm recently !

I think the hats look great as a collection and start to create a pattern which I find interesting, looking at the designs of the hats and thinking about this whole 'badge of honour' concept, the coloured stripes reminded me of military ribbon racks.

With this in mind I've been experimenting with systems of colour to represent the badges of honour of a football fan, I think it would be really nice to have some sort of badge system or other wearable system to display your dedication to the footballing cause. Similar to cub and scout badges. In a way its also similar to something which was brought up in college a while back, Nerd Badges. Check them out there pretty funny and clever with it.  

Coincidentally, considering I've been working on these collections, Ive just got an email from Jonny (check out his work here, he's always got some interesting stuff going on) pointing me towards a really nice collection of fabric football's by a Swedish Designer and Illustrator called Klas Ernflo. They're great, check them out here:

BALLS

Its a really interesting subversion of football as a subject and also the football as an object.

28/02/2011