Exhibiting a Life: Gluck and the Biographic Object

The relationship between objects and biography embraces an inherent duality: objects embody their own histories while, at the same time, play a significant role in the excavation, construction and re-presentation of an individual’s life story. Items relating to a subject’s personal image can be especially resonant when viewed in a biographic context, signifying specific life events and revealing intimate perspectives on the measured construction of the subject’s image: what we might call their ‘dressed appearance’. Components employed in the configuration of dressed appearance include clothing and accessories, items for personal grooming and related cosmetic products, even a distinctive application of make-up or hairstyle. Dressed appearance also encompasses less tangible items such as physical bearing (movement, stance, gesture and poise), a signature fragrance or even a distinctive sound produced by items habitually worn by the subject. Recognising the accumulation of all these items as dressed appearance, we might consider clothing, accessories, stance, gesture, fragrance and embodied sound as ‘dressed objects’.

Written during the developmental stages of the exhibition Gluck: Art & Identity (Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, 18 November 2017-11 March 2018) this chapter reflects on the interconnected dynamic of objects, exhibitions and biography. Through reference to examples from recent fashion exhibitions, a typology of biographic dressed objects are identified and described (the spectacular object, the modest object, the relic and the imprinted object, the representational object and the narrative object) and curatorial strategies and presentation techniques suggested, through which we might present and interpret Gluck’s material legacy to embody the artist’s life history.