Thu 29th December
Her made-to-measure works include thin lengths of pleated fabric inspired by Dior’s classic New Look suit that hang from gallery ceiling to floor in a tall, graceful L, and a shimmering curtain of white silky material, printed with a distorted version of a snakeskin pattern, taken from her own Primark vest. She has cast the waistbands of cigarette pants in aluminium and hung them like bangles from oak hooks, while her drawings have been created with cigarette ash and make-up, as well as pencil and gouache.
What role do the fashion references play in your work?
“I don’t think directly about fashion, rather I see myself as working from inside myself and from inside capitalism. Clothes are strange objects because they are never entirely outside myself – I can’t hold my shirt at arm’s-length and look at it, because I am wearing it. They are also the objects that are the most contingent, and have an enormous capacity to change according to their wearer and where they are worn. Linda Grant describes fashion as having an ‘ability always to occupy the present tense’, an incredible vitality and mutability – I want the same things for the exhibitions I make.”
What made you decide to link fashion and art-making?
“My first experience that things in the world could be made was through fabric and clothing. My mum, a nurse, made not only curtains and upholstery for extra money, but also made mine and my sister’s clothes, toys, bags, bedding – anything she could make for us using fabric she would make. So I grew up knowing that the world around me could be constructed using textiles, and also that this was a very human way of showing care for others, and attempting to remake the world around me. Later on, I learnt that the beginning of what we know today as architecture were walls made from fabric. I have continued this into my work as an artist, particularly the exhibition-making part, which feels like clothing a room. I have extended what I started with my mum into other materials that I also attempt to use like fabric – stainless steel, marble, cast aluminium, paper, bronze, and so on.
Do you differentiate between your references to couture and high-street chains?
“I don’t think of Dior’s New Look as having any less or more value than the Primark vest, it’s just that both things became vital materials that I needed to make work. I photocopied the vest, scanned it and then stretched it. In the print I made from this manipulated image of it, the long stretched arm and neck holes imply an absent body in the room that the work is in, and its gorgeous blurred snake-print pattern shivers up the fabric it is printed on.”
by Skye Sherwin
