Malign Muses: When Fashion Turns Back

The exhibition 'Malign Muses: When Fashion Turns Back' was commissioned by ModeMuseum, Antwerp, a museum which opened to showcase the region’s historic collection and reflect the experimental fashion associated with the Antwerp Academy.

The brief for the exhibition was two-fold: to reflect the influence of the past on recent dress (a homage to the museum); and to create an exhibition that would question the practice of fashion curation and its collaborative process. The exploration of theory through practice was echoed in the use of theoretical writing in this exhibition. It was about the visualization of history: the genealogy of dress. By taking arguments from academic texts, e.g. Evans, Caroline, Fashion at the Edge and developing them in three-dimensional form, it aimed to draw attention to how critical curation and theory can intersect.

The exhibition created the opportunity to commission work by jeweller Naomi Filmer who created mannequin prosthetics, illustrator Ruben Toledo, the two-dimensional graphics, and Yuri Avvakumov, a leading Russian architect to design the final section ‘The Garden of the Forking Paths’, using his neo -constructivist vision to create this illusion of an infinite genealogy.

The catalogue unusually showed the research stage, including notes from Caroline Evans’s manuscript, original drawings by Filmer, Avvakumov and Toledo and my working sketches. It suggested what a catalogue could become - documentation of the curatorial and exhibition design processes, rather than finished object.

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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