By Way of an Explanation

Commissioned for the ‘Conversation Pieces’ exhibition at Tenderbooks. 'By Way of an Explanation' presents an experimental and experiential account of the tensions that result from trying to rejoin two halves of a life that cannot bear the reciprocal load. It is presented as a series of short prose verses that sit between the pages of the texts in the reader. It is intended to be read as an account of a life that slips between theories, as an honest representation of experiences that inform, but are absent from the academic studies which make up the reader.

Conversation Pieces frames an on-going process of discursive design, generating objects and situations that provoke dialogue around the production and consumption of fashion. For this edition, the curators invited a range of responses to a reader comprising fragments of texts on fashion and clothing. The responses include interventions and rewrites, highlighting, short stories, drawings, notes, photographs and collages. They reveal the intricacies of fashion language and play with established boundaries between fashion theory and daily dress practices.

With responses from David Bennett, Roland Brauchli, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Matthew Crowley, Clare Farrell,
Laura Gardner, Catherine Ince, Ruth Lang, Jenny Lau, Marco Pecorari, Corinne Quinn, Johannes Reponen,
Kate V Robertson, Hendrickje Schimmel/ Tenant of Culture, Sue Tompkins, Thomas Turner

• Organisation