I wish I could see the Helmut Lang's solo exhibit, Make It Hard at the Fireplace project, East Hampton. Although when reading Lang's interview on Hintmag.com there was a sentence in it that made me wince....
"What methods did you use to destroy the reported 6000 garments from your fashion archives?
Lang: 'The pieces where put through a big shredder truck under my supervision.'"
...wow, to imagine beautiful garments, with stunning detail be shredded in a huge piece of machinery, is an idea that is so far away from one another that this intrigues me. I wonder if this was a hard task- to choose which pieces to shred and which to have for Lang's archive, yet Lang seemed quite relaxed in his choices, saying, 'I shredded all the pieces without remorse or preference. It was about erasing the difference of what they once stood for.'
Although the sculptures look quite simple, in that they don't have complex silhouettes, I reckon when seen up close they are a very interesting sculpture to look at- to understand which collection each sculpture holds is quite interesting.
If anyone gets the opportunity to see it, please fill me in!
Although I have now finished my Fashion Promotion with Styling course, a little work has followed my exit, which is always fab!
I am attending Graduate Fashion Week on the 5th June, I have my exhibition private view on the 10th June, on the 11th June and the 12th June I am involved in 'The Stylist's Closet' at the Trafford Centre where I will offer personal style advise to the male customer and then to finish off, I am a costume assistant for London based artist & filmmaker, Shezad Dawood's new feature length science fiction film, Piercing Brightness, so over these next couple of months i'm busy busy busy which is really great, after my last hand in yesterday I didn't want my schedule to become stale, and with all this ahead it looks like it's getting busier.
I will keep you guys updated of my whereabouts over these two months, I will try and post as many photos as possible to show you a glimpse into my world right now.
So with all this ahead of me something tells me I need to brush up a little on my sci fi film knowledge, I might start with Blade Runner or 1930's classic Metropolis: i'm planning on posting my ideas and thoughts of each film I watch into the run up on here, kind of giving a little review. I'm excited about these next couple of months, meeting new people, making new contacts and getting into the industry.
A while back now I read an article on Mrs B. AKA Joan Burstein CBE, the founder of Browns. The article attracted my attention mainly from the image of Mrs B. She is such a stylish, elderly lady, when I'm her age I pray I will look like her.
The exhibition celebrates and embraces the designers the founders of the company helped when they first hit the fashion industry. My favourite- Hussein Chalayan's graduate collection, of course.
Browns: 40 years of Fashion Innovation opens at The Regent Lofts and Penthouses, The Courtyard, 16-18 Marshall Street from May 13
As I have now more or less finished for summer I am now busying myself with plenty of cultural ‘to dos’ yesterday for instance I caught up on a couple of errands then I went to one of my local charity shops and decided to do some volunteer work until I get another job (I was made redundant 2 weeks ago :( ) So this is exciting.
But today however, I visited one of the biggest local galleries I live near, to see the new exhibition showcasing Robbie Coopers work surrounding the idea of peoples behaviour in terms of when they are on a computer game, watching a film or the TV. I read a couple of weeks ago an article in the Sunday times magazine discussing his work and since then I have been fascinated to see the exhibition, ‘Immersion’ to see the imagery and a VT showing, mainly children, during their time of ‘leisure’. The VT I watched was quite creepy really, the emotions of the kids are so placid considering the games they were on (Call of Duty, Grand Theft auto) and the films they were watching (Saw, Peppa Pig). Also when watching the VT you yourself feel quite exposed. It’s a strange experience. The images at the exhibition, physically, were huge also, again really bringing in the onlooker into the world of the subject. I’m quite mesmerized with people, I like to understand them, I’m a big people watcher so this exhibition I really enjoyed.
Another exhibition I saw whilst at the museum was Simon Roberts, ‘We English’.
An exhibition of the ‘investigation of the English at leisure’. It was quite ironic really I had just come out of the Pictureville cinema after watching ‘I am Love’ a hugely Italian film, then onto ‘We English’: the exhibition brought me back to my ‘English-ness’. The images in the exhibition were a mixture of Roberts’ alongside images from the Nation Media Museum collections and a few Martin Parr images which is obviously very fitting considering Roberts’ concept. Roberts shot his images using a Ebony 45S camera (a large format camera) to create these immensely large images. This is what caught my attention firstly the shear size of the images adds that little extra for the viewer, you almost become part of the photograph. With Roberts’ images placed alongside images dating right back to the early 1990’s you realise that English leisure hasn’t changed massively: the exhibition although somewhat voyeuristic celebrates English-ness in an amusing way.
If you have time to visit the Museum do so, because being a student it’s great to get things for free, and both these exhibitions were free entry. It’s obviously free to sit and home and relax but its much more entertaining seeing some lovely, inspiring work than sat at home watching a screen, why not watch peoples expressions whilst they do the TV watching for you: it's much more interesting.
We had a double whammy lecture today, Fashion and Art and Fashion photography and the north.
I was looking forward to the lecture, I knew we would be introduced to plenty of creative people: people I have come across before and new people I haven’t. We were first looking at fashion and art.
I come from both an art background and a fashion background, they naturally crossover whether it be through literal ways, anyone remember the season when Vivienne Westwood had the help from school children who designed artwork that Vivienne used for her collection? Well, this was a literal connection, but naturally what we all see and involve ourselves with influences parts of our lives- I find this is how my natural crossover came from with regards to art and fashion.
At the beginning of the lecture we discussed ways which we though art and fashion were and became connected;
Fashion and art; -they are both creative subjects-help each other -fashion has a widespread publicity-art wants this -influential to each other -fashion is a representation of social culture and politics -fashion has a different history to make reference to -fashion is more accessible -fashion-commercial more so than art -both areas seek financial backing -art-respect-art has an aura -art seems to have more depth and credibility
After our thoughts Adam broke down the concept down into categories. Firstly looking at the fashion exhibition. It’s interesting to think about how images in certain places are looked at differently, for instance Steven Meisel’s Versace adverts were seen in an exhibition, in a gallery but they were also used for commercial use. When thinking about this, I believe, when looking at the ads in a magazine your mind looks at the image in a different way-you tend to look at the image with a sense of want and commercial reasoning, but in a gallery space at an exhibition you tend to question the image more so than in a mag or newspaper- the meaning of the image is unpicked in your mind.
We were shown some examples where fashion and art have been side by side. The exhibition at the National Gallery, ‘Face of Fashion’; and exhibition at the V&A ‘Imperfect Beauty’ for example. It was nice to look at who at these exhibitions were really being exhibited and shown.
Throughout the lecture we were introduced to many creative people in the industry, some highlighted I want to research more, for instance Martha Rosler for her use of collage and Graham Dolphin for his media use and the way he ‘attacks’ beauty/fashion imagery.
The next section we looked at fashion and art, the crossover. We looked at works by Elsa Schiaparelli where she worked with surrealists; also Tracey Emin’s collaboration with Longchamp creating limited addition handbags. The publication that celebrated the crossover initially was ‘Purple’ magazine: they seemed to pioneer fashion and art before anyone really caught on.
After this section we examined the fashion show. We obviously looked at Alexander McQueen’s fashion shows: also Viktor and Rolf and Hussein Chalayan- all these designers I absolutely love, so I really enjoyed discussing their work and looking at their shows. We looked at the fashion show with relation to substance designers (emphasising the process over product); science (designers who give intense attention to technology of fabrics); structure (unique clothing construction- form over function) and statement designers (the designers who use the show to help make a statement).
After this part of the lecture I realised I need to do a lot of research into some professional creative’s in the industry;
-Martha Rosler -Sam Taylor Wood -Graham Dolphin -Vanessa Beecroft (specifically for our matchbox photo shoot) -Dash Snow (found objects-Polaroid’s) -Cindy Sherman (specifically for our matchbox photo shoot) identity of women -Alexander McQueen (specifically at the show with Joel Peter - the mirror room)
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