Carapace

Originally entitled ‘Patronage, Artisan, Media and Audience: A model for Twenty-first Century Craftsmanship' this project set out to create of a body of work that exhibits crafts excellence and enables a clear understanding of the skills and investment that makes the creation of such work possible.

Commercial garment patterns were abstracted and reassembled using techniques employed by the tailor, the butcher and the mortician. The composite forms create abstract figurative structures more akin to the carcasses of animals than the fashion identities from which the forms are generated. Volumes and extended surfaces of unprecedented scales were created from laminated leather hide rather than conventional fabric.

Lamination was achieved by exploring the scale to which thickness of hide could be layered using the adhesive methods of the shoe and accessory industries. Tiny margins and tolerances in the thicknesses and structural properties determined the degree of flexibility and complexity of the forms that could be achieved, while techniques developed from research into the medical procedure of closing wounds was complemented with a degree of completion that masked the processes of assembly. Links between historical and contemporary identities are expressed through the development of original techniques for inlay, resulting from two years of research into sixteenth-century marquetry.

Judith Clark's exhibition design focused on the pieces' resemblance to meat: large hooks drew attention to the many allusions the work makes to the fashion trade/meat market. In Mexico the exhibition added a butchers table as ‘alterpiece’ adding to the effect of 'Memento Mori'.

Importance was placed on the catalogue as a dialogue between Clark as fashion curator, Jennifer Higgie as art critic and George L Legendre as architect, to provide new descriptions for the work: its “exhibitability”, its decorative richness and its mis-constructions. The essays were translated into Spanish for use within Mexican art institutions.

The final body of work consists of an installation and performance for the gallery environment using mixed media props, including autopsy tables and commissioned metal structures more akin to a butchers window or abattoir.

Dai Rees

Research Interests

Craftsmanship, Fashion, Fine Art, Media

Current Research

The research project 'Patronage, Artisan, Media and Audience, A Model for Twenty First Century Craftsmanship', is focussed around an installation of abstract, figurative, structural casings created from inlayed leather-hide.

Conceived to expose the level and range of skills, techniques and time required to design, assemble and decorate objects that exhibit crafts excellence, the central installation is a collection of suspended sculptural skins that extends our awareness of garment construction and embellishment, and heightens our sensitivity to the significance of craftsmanship.

Researching marquetry, illumination and the Intaglio process of acid etching from the sixteenth century, the work identifies links between historical and contemporary techniques. Inlayed materials transform the surface of the leather hide, complementing the developed techniques for the moulding, manipulation and construction of the pieces which combine the technical skills from different craft and manufacturing fields to create new aesthetic qualities.

The work produced during the AHRC Fellowship will form part of a national and international touring exhibition from October 2005 supported with a lecture, seminar and discussions.

Judith Clark
Research Interests

Curating Fashion, Exhibition design, Display History and Theory, Fashion History and Theory, Museology.

Current Research

My research looks at issues surrounding the display of fashion. I am continuing experimental curatorial work carried out since 1997 at the Judith Clark Costume Gallery. I have more recently applied those ideas to museum space/scale. I am interested in how architectural theory can inform theories about the display of clothes and the history of exhibition-making. I am working with Amy de la Haye, on a book for Yale University Press on Curating Fashion (1971 - the present).
Forthcoming exhibition projects include curating and designing The Art of Fashion: Installing Allusions for the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, September 2009; and Roma/Amor (with Maria Luisa Frisa) on the history of Roman Couture commissioned by Alta Roma, Palazzo Venezia, Rome; and 'Words for Clothes' an installation/collaboration with psychoanalyst Adam Phillips (London, 2010). I am currently setting up judithclarkcostume.com workshop, an experimental space dedicated to curating exhibitions to be exhibited online.

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