58 Aware: Art Fashion Identity 59

The third GSK Contemporary exhibition at the RA’s Burlington Gardens galleries tackles the ecological, social and political influence of fashion on art. Co-curator, artist and designer Lucy Orta tells Ben Luke what’s in store for the show Fashion statements

Andreas Gursky’s Kuwait Stock Exchange (2007, Gabi Scardi and the RA’s Kathleen Soriano. Orta years of thinking about the interface between opposite) is an epic and enigmatic work by this featured in ‘Earth’, alongside her husband and art and fashion. She studied fashion design at German master of photography. Shot from a collaborator Jorge, showing Antarctic Village, No Nottingham Polytechnic in the mid-1980s, high vantage point typical of Gursky’s work, the Borders (2007), a tent covered in a variety of specialising in knitwear design, but became picture takes an overview of the trading floor national flags. She recognised that GSK disillusioned with fashion’s extreme where hundreds of men are milling about Contemporary also offered the opportunity to extravagance soon afterwards and began to reading screens and talking either amongst explore a fresh ecological sensibility in fashion. make art. She has since trodden the line themselves or on the phone. between the two disciplines, influencing the What stands out is their uniform of flowing In splicing apparently fashion world with works such as Refuge Wear white gowns. These men are dressed not in the – Habitent (1992-93), a shiny silver creation suits that we associate with the City and Wall incongruous images of different which is both tent and garment, while showing Street, but in traditional, ankle-length thawb in galleries across the world. She is now smock and ghutrah headdress which, set against dresses together, Margiela creates Professor of Art, Fashion and the Environment the red chairs and floor, give the photograph an a variation of the assemblage at the London College of Fashion (LCF). extraordinary formal beauty. This single image Belgian designer Martin Margiela is among at once creates a reflection of globalisation and techniques pioneered by those influenced by Orta, and he is one of a the shift in centres of global finance, a stunning modernist artists, including number of top fashion figures, including the formal symmetry and colour harmony, and a late Alexander McQueen (page 60), to feature striking evocation of the importance of clothing Picasso and the surrealists.’ in ‘Aware’. A series of Margiela’s collages to cultural and social identity. reflects his adoption of avant-garde art Gursky’s photograph is one of the highlights ‘We’re looking at a new era in fashion,’ Orta says, techniques in his design. In splicing of the third and final GSK Contemporary ‘a new thinking about the ethics of designing apparently incongruous images of different exhibition, ‘Aware: Art, Fashion, Identity’, which clothes, the way we produce them, the materials dresses together, Margiela creates a variation continues the series’ commitment to showing and processes we use, the environments that of the assemblage techniques pioneered by contemporary artists’ responses to clothes are created in.’ Additionally, countless modernist artists including Picasso and the environmental, social and political issues. The artists in recent decades have realised that surrealists. Margiela is clearly conscious of exhibition takes the baton from last year’s GSK clothing reveals much about the society we live fashion’s reputation as ‘a consumerist exhibition, ‘Earth: Art of a Changing World’, in in and our place within it. ‘Fashion is useful business, always munching things up, and which artists responded to the urgent need for because it is so tangible to the public,’ Orta leaving a lot of waste behind’, as Orta puts it. action in the face of climate change. Lucy Orta, explains. ‘You can get across messages to the ‘Aware’ features a recreation of his exhibition an artist and designer, is co-curating ‘Aware’ masses very quickly.’ from 1997, where he worked with a

along with Italian contemporary art curator For Orta, ‘Aware’ is the result of around 20 microbiologist to explore the permanence and London Berlin Magers Sprüth 2010/Courtesy Kunst/DACS – Bild Gursky/VG Andreas © Kuwait Stock Exchange I, 2007, by Andreas Gursky

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decay of garments by dipping his clothes in a Sakoku-segment (2010, opposite bottom) based fungal solution so that they would gradually rot. on Bunraku a traditional Japanese form of ‘It questions the ephemerality and destruction of puppetry, by Hussein Chalayan, a Turkish fashion, but in a poetic manner,’ Orta says, Cypriot designer and contemporary artist who ‘because the clothing itself then produces shows at London’s Lisson Gallery. different fungal compositions and patterns, A number of works are visually enticing but depending on the material used’. contain complex social subject matter, such as The show features an iconic work by Spanish artist Alicia Framis’ China Five Stars – Alexander McQueen, whose frequently dark, 100 Ways to Wear a Flag (2007). ‘She invited elaborate catwalk shows trod the line between designers to imagine different dresses using the fashion and performance art. His 1998 Autumn/ Chinese flag,’ says Orta. ‘In the first instance, it Winter collection, Joan, (bottom right) inspired looks like a beautiful collection of garments, but by Joan of Arc, featured a delicate, red lace then it’s the Chinese flag and, of course, because all-in-one garment that sheathes the face and a lot of manufacturing is done in China, there’s body in the manner of chain mail. ‘We were very the idea of uniformity, of mass production.’ interested in his earlier collections,’ says Orta, Meschac Gaba’s colourful sculpture series Wig ‘and they were linked very much to identity – the Architecture (2006, bottom right) prompts a revolutionary quality, and taking on the world, similar double-take. ‘Gaba is from Benin, and he as a kind of battlefield.’ uses traditional braiding, so at first glance they Dai Rees is a member of Orta’s LCF research look like fantastic braided headpieces, wigs that team, and he started out as a ceramicist, before could be worn,’ Orta explains. ‘But on closer look creating accessories for designers including they are representations of iconic buildings of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. Rees’s power, like the Tour de la Defense in Paris.’ work for ‘Aware’ is Carapace: Triptych, The Royal Academicians’ works punctuate the Butcher’s Window (2003, top right) in which he show. Gillian Wearing RA’s famous Sixty Minute distorts dress patterns, and reconstructs them as Silence (1996, opposite, centre) is an hour-long sculptures. ‘They look like cowhides or video featuring a static shot of three rows of carcasses, but if you take a close look at them, policeman posed as if for an official photograph. you see that they are stitched together, so you can see the pattern for a sleeve or a bodice.’ To decorate the skins of the carcasses, Rees has Yoko Ono’s 1965 performance at used marquetry techniques. ‘They are exquisite Carnegie Hall in New York pieces,’ Orta says. ‘They are almost deathly, but they come from an exploration of the body.’ shows her sitting on stage dressed Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (opposite bottom) offers an unsettlingly direct and personal reflection on in black, while members of the body politics. A video of Ono’s 1965 performance audience cut away at her at Carnegie Hall in New York, the work shows her sitting on stage dressed in black, while clothing, exposing her body.’ members of the audience cut away at her clothing, gradually exposing Ono’s body as she ‘One minute we recognise them as being stares impassively ahead of her. Though policeman because they have the uniform, but originally ambiguous in its intention, the work then over the period of the video the has been read variously as a response to the authoritarian look then disappears because they effects of the atom bombs in Hiroshima and start moving and shuffling, so they become Nagasaki, as a feminist comment on the human in a sense. It’s this idea that we have of objectification of women’s bodies, and, recently, uniform as a protective shell around you, it is by Ono herself, as a plea for world peace. ‘It is linked to identity, how we perceive ourselves and probably the most intimate piece in the whole how others perceive us.’ exhibition,’ Orta says. ‘It is linked to feminism, It seems apt that ‘Aware’ should take place in and to Ono’s activism and her idealism, but also Burlington Gardens, which overlooks Savile to the self, and to the stripping of one’s identity Row, the historic centre of bespoke tailoring, and to reveal the fragile human being beneath.’ Bond Street, the centre of London’s most A new commission by another legend of early exclusive fashion stores. Orta and her fellow performance art, American artist Vito Acconci, curators hope to use the imposing Burlington Umbruffla (2005, top left) is ‘both a cocoon and Gardens stage to ‘provoke us to look at and think an umbrella’, Orta says. ‘It’s an umbrella that about clothing differently’. After a visit to creates a personal space, like a bubble. He is ‘Aware’, wandering through those famous streets using a special material that is reflective, and he might indeed be a very different experience. says it is about the need to have your own space in an urban environment.’ GSK Contemporary – Aware: Art Fashion Identity Top left Umbruffla,2005, by Vito Acconci Two other new commissions have been 6 Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts, London, Top right Carapace: Triptych, The Butcher’s Window realised with Orta’s colleagues at the LCF. One is 020 7300 8000, www.royalacademy.org.uk, 2 Dec–30 Top left Collage for exhibition catalogue La Maison Martin Margiela (9/4/1615) Centre (detail), 2003, by Dai Rees Sixty Minute Silence, silhouette 16 (Autumn/Winter 1996/1997), 1997 (before being dipped in fungal Above , a large installation by Yinka Shonibare, whose Jan, 2011. Supported by GlaxoSmithKline. See Events 1996, by Gillian Wearing RA Sakoku-segment solution) Top right Exhibition La Maison Martin Margiela (9/4/1615) silhouette 16 Right 2010, by Hussein Chalayan Autumn Winter 1998: sculpture Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle (2010) and Lectures, page 88. Light Works: Lucy + Jorge (Autumn/Winter 1996/1997), 1997 (after being dipped in fungal solution) , Joan 1998, by Alexander McQueen currently sits on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Orta by James Putnam and Gabriela Salgado (£29.95, Above left Cut Piece, 1965, by Yoko Ono Above right Ivry, Rue des Péniches, 2006, from the ‘Wig Architecture’ series, by Meschac Gaba Plinth. The other is an installation, Catwalking of Moore/Courtesy Chris © Photo Ono. Yoko Ono/© Yoko of Courtesy London. Paley, Maureen of Courtesy Rees. Dai of Courtesy Goedewaagen. Bob Photo Chalayan Hussein of Courtesy 2010. London DACS, and NY ARS, Ricciardi)/© Garrett Marques, Eduardo Basta, Sarina Nunez, Dario Acconci, Studio/(Vito Acconci Courtesy Goedewaagen. Bob Photo 2010. DACS Moulin/© Le Beijing, Gimignano, San Continua, Galleria of Courtesy Black Dog)

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