Historical information

One of three We The Makers videos commissioned by the Programs and Education department at the National Wool Museum to assist in learning and engagement alongside the We The Makers Sustainable Fashion Prize 2025 exhibition at the National Wool Museum.

The films feature artist interviews from three finalists from We the Makers, providing insights into their personal influences, the motivations behind their material choices and the impact of culture on artistic practice.

This film features designer Corin Corcoran and their work 'Sustain Our Stains'.

Artist Statement:

This work explores the tension between what we discard and what remains. The dress is a meditation on waste, memory, and the marks we leave behind — often without realising. Constructed from reclaimed textiles, the surface has been stained using collected metal waste. Rust, born from decay, becomes the medium through which this piece tells its story. These marks aren’t artificial embellishments — they are scars left by objects that were once useful, now forgotten. The process of rusting becomes a slow, quiet collaboration between time, weather, and the materials we throw away.

At the heart of this work is the idea that nothing truly disappears. Even in decay, objects carry history — and they imprint that history onto the world around them. The rusted stains serve as a metaphor for the often-invisible impact of human consumption. We discard things — metal scraps, clothing, time, people — without thinking about the residue they leave behind. This dress captures those traces, preserving them in a way that’s both intimate and unsettling.

The piece asks the viewer to consider the long life of what we call waste. It challenges us to look more closely at what we overlook, and to understand that the things we abandon continue to speak, to stain, to shape. In a world striving for sustainability, perhaps we must also learn to sustain our stain — to acknowledge and carry the weight of our impact, rather than pretending it disappears. This is a dress made not only from waste, but with waste — a collaboration with rust, with the discarded, with the forgotten — inviting reflection on permanence, responsibility, and the quiet weight of residue.

Physical description

Three minute fifty one second digital video file with audio.