The third season of contemporary art at 6 Burlington Gardens examines how artists and designers use clothing as a mechanism to communicate and reveal elements of our identity.
The exhibition contains work by 30 emerging as well as established international contemporary practitioners including Marina Abramović, Acconci Studio, Azra Akšamija, Maja Bajevic, Handan Börüteçene, Hussein Chalayan, Alicia Framis, Meschac Gaba, Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Andreas Gursky, Mella Jaarsma, Kimsooja, Claudia Losi, Susie MacMurray, Marcello Maloberti, La Maison Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Yoko Ono, Maria Papadimitriou, Grayson Perry, Dai Rees, Katerina šedá, Cindy Sherman, Yinka Shonibare, Helen Storey, Rosemarie Trockel, Sharif Waked, Gillian Wearing RA, Yohji Yamamoto and Andrea Zittel.
New work by Yinka Shonibare and Hussein Chalayan, commissioned especially for Aware by London College of Fashion and the Royal Academy of Arts, is on display. Hussein Chalayan presents a new dress inspired by the 300 year old Japanese tradition of Bunraku puppet theatre while Yinka Shonibare has worked with bespoke tailor Chris Stevens to create 18 designs based on 19th-century children’s dress assembled to form a wall mural.
Aware is divided into four sections. Storytelling acknowledges the role of clothing in the representation of personal and cultural history. Grayson Perry’s Artist’s Robe, 2004, an elaborate, appliquéd coat made of a patchwork of luxurious fabrics, comments on the figure and status of the artist in the world today.
Building covers the concept of clothing being used as a form of protection and the notion of carrying one’s own shelter, referencing the nomadic, portable nature of modern life. On display is Shelter Me 1, 2005 by Mella Jaarsma who in her work parallels garment and architectural constructions. Jaarsma defines shelter as the minimal construction needed for protection, not yet the shape of a house, but directly related to the proportions of the human body.
Belonging and Confronting examines ideas of nationality as well as displacement and political and social confrontation, recognizing the tensions associated with the assimilation of new cultures and traditions. In Palestinian artist Sharif Waked’s video installation, Chic Point, 2003, the contradictory interpretations of revealing flesh as a fashion prerogative or as a humiliation juxtapose two worlds, one of high fashion and the other of semi-imprisonment.
The importance of Performance in the presentation of fashion and clothing, and in highlighting the roles that we play in our daily life, is explored in the final section. It features film footage of Yoko Ono’s performance of Cut Piece at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York in 1965, for which the artist invited the public to cut strips from her clothing. While the scraps of fabric fall to the floor, the unveiling of the female body suggests the total destruction of the barriers imposed by convention.
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/gsk-contemporary-season-2010/exhibition/
He looks at Leonardo da Vinci's world-famous diagram of the perfect human body, which has many layers from anatomy to architecture, and defines our species like no other drawing before or since. The Vitruvian Man, drawn in the 1480s when he was living and working in Milan, has become one of the most famous images in the world. Leonardo's drawings form a vast body of work, covering every imaginable subject in spectacular detail: from feet, skulls and hands to muscles and sinews; from hearts and lungs to buildings, bridges and flying machines.
Vitruvian Man perfectly synthesises Leonardo's passions for anatomy, for the mechanics of the human body and for geometry. It is also full of surprises, illustrating an ancient architectural riddle set out 1,500 years earlier by the classical writer Vitruvius about the relative proportions of buildings and men; a riddle that, even today, still fascinates and beguiles experts and viewers alike.
Click link below to watch it on bbc iplayer.
What Future Fashion Fabrication?11 November 2010Cinema 2 | |
| Tickets: £7 online/£9 on the door (Ticket does not include admission to exhibition) Time: 7.30pm http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?id=11289 | |
Christopher Kane has done a collection based on The queen mother and Queen Margaret based on her 'rebelious' side. Although he's used sorbet shades i think from a textile side the collection is inspiring and shows a more 'fashion' side of the brief :).
FIRST YEARS!
WIN A YEAR OF FREE TRAVEL WITH NATIONAL EXPRESS WEST MIDLANDS (NEWM) AND THE CHANCE TO WORK ON A PROFESSIONAL PHOTO-SHOOT
Fashion Design Competition
A fantastic opportunity has arisen for Fashion:Lab*BETA students: design a dress to promote the launch of NEWM new UV security ticket.
The Brief:
Design a dress from bus tickets to promote the release of a new UV bus ticket on NEWM. When designing you should consider the materials available to you – samples of which will be available to you from Monday 27th September in the Fashion:Lab. Your client has also asked you to consider the following key words when designing – Elaborate, Romantic, Whimsical, Beautiful; the opposite of bus travel!
Deliverables:
A3 Concept Board that includes research, samples of detailing, paper manipulation and initial ideas.
A3 Design Board to include front and back views of your dress design.
DEADLINE All work to be submitted to Fashion:Lab by 4.30pm on Friday 8th October
Designs will be judged by a team from NEWM on Monday 11th October 9am.
The winning designer will help produce the dress with a small team of Fashion:Lab students, you will also be invited to attend the professional photo-shoot and help style your dress on the model. This campaign is scheduled to be used for all advertising and media throughout the West Midlands!!
As well having your dress publicised through the media, the winner will receive one year of unlimited travel with National Express West Midlands.
This is a fantastic opportunity, and something that will look great on your personal statements and in your portfolios for university.
Susie MacMurray's work encompasses drawing, sculpture and architectural installations. A former classical musician, she retrained as an artist, graduating with an MA in Fine Art in 2001. She now has an international exhibition profile and shows regularly in the USA and Europe as well as the UK.
An engagement with materials is central to MacMurray's practice. Her role is one of alchemist: combining material, form and context in deceptively simple ways to stimulate associations within the viewers' minds and to elicit nuanced meanings.
Working in installation and sculpture she has gained a reputation for site-specific interventions in historic spaces. Her work frequently references the history of a space and seeks to merge the particularities of that history, the specifics of site, and the inherent references attached to materials in an attempt to gain insight into the relationship between place and people.
Drawing is an important part of MacMurray's practice. In addition to her large scale pen & ink work she extends the possibilities of making drawings using unconventional materials including rubber tubing, hair and wax. She also makes pen & ink drawings on a more intimate scale and still produces small editions of her sculptural wall pieces for private commissions.
Author Rob Penn travels around the world collecting handbuilt parts for his dream bicycle and charts the social history of one of mankind's greatest inventions.This short film directed by Alex Johns accompanies RCA MA graduate Matthew Miller's Fashion East menswear collection.
The architect and critic Michael Sorkin is interested in animal forms because they challenge architectural conventions. Whereas buildings are often symmetrical and almost always static, a moving animal is neither of these things. Projects such as the Beached Houses shown here explore this apparently fundamental difference. The three houses, called Ray, Carp and Slug, have a similar arrangement of rooms on two floors. They are based on animals that are 'symmetrical but only until they wiggle'. 'Our effort is to measure the space between the fish and the wiggle', says Sorkin, 'This is the study of a lifetime.'
'The Fashion Designer’s Sketchbook is the fourth book by fashion writer Hywel Davies with contributions from the likes of Yohji Yamamoto, Lagerfeld for Chanel, Dries Van Noten, John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood and many others. Contrary to what the name suggests, the book is not just a snapshot of the sketchbooks of some of the world’s most acclaimed fashion designers, although many do offer their sketches as a contribution, but explores the individual design process from inspiration to construction and offers and insight into their working practices.'
Seated Woman with Bent Knee
The Scornful Woman
Self Portrait
Chlorophyll Skin from Lucy McRae on Vimeo.
An experimentation into color, movement, absorption and the bodyMetallic Skin from Lucy McRae on Vimeo.
Metallic Skin is a work in progress that will be featured in Sao Paulo's ROJO Nova event in the Museum of Image and Sound. Over a week Lucy will be experimenting with liquid, magnification, miniaturisation and repetition on the human body.
