CREATIVE RESPONSE TO WEEK THREE

Face painting has always been escapism for me. If i've had a tough days work I like to paint a new face on and immerse myself in a new form.

I'm a great fan of make-up and the effects it can have on peoples' personalities, as well as clothing. 

I decided to transform myself into new characters using makeup,  and document how it made me feel. 

I wanted to know how easy it would be to fool myself into thinking I really was this new character.

And if it would affect the way I dressed.

no.1 Drag

• I immediately felt flamboyant.
•  I wanted to show people my face to see their reactions.
• I moved my face slower and held any faces I pulled for a longer amount of time.
• I felt extremely comfortable in my actions. 
• The make-up felt like a mask and I could act like someone else, become someone else, without being accused of being fake or strange.
• I felt ridiculous in the casual clothes I was wearing. I wanted to dress fabulous. I felt I could wear  extravagant clothing but feel a lot more comfortable than usual.
• I chose to use webcam to document this because it allowed me to view myself as the photo was being taken, to insure I looked the best I could.

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No.2 Clown

• I felt fickle and changeable.
• I pulled my hair up into a mop so it could hang around my face. 
• I wanted to pull strange faces and scare.
• I chewed a disclosing tablet to make my tongue go pink, because it seemed right.
• What I was wearing didn't seem to matter. 
• I used an SLR to document this because I preferred to act the character without seeing myself. I could then look at the photos afterwards. I used a shallow focus and different effects. Afterwards I was quite shocked at the pictures.

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No.3 Mutton dressed as Lamb

• I linked 'looking old but pretending to be young' with a drunken feeling.
• The wrinkles made me feel uncomfortable but pretending to be drunk felt similar to being drunk, and boosted my confidence.
• I picked silly items of clothing from my wardrobes and tried them on, but didn't want to show anyone.
• I used the glare protecter (created the ring) to take pictures. It felt like I was distancing myself from the pictures by viewing them through a tunnel.
• Looking back at the pictures was uncomfortable, I looked ridiculous  in a lot of them and the makeup looked out of place.

WEEK THREE - Gilbert&George, and Nikki S. Lee

GILBERT&GEORGE

The pair are living sculptures. They've dedicated their whole lives to being a performance.
They're best recognised for their smart attire - suits, hats and tweed
When being photographed they strike the same poses - 'George's eyes chill into a thousand-yard stare; Gilbert's expression mutates into that of an angry bulldog, undone by a ­comically raised right eyebrow'

‘Our subject matter is the world. It is pain. Pain. Just to hear the world turning is pain, isn’t it? Totally, every day, every second. Our inspiration is all those people alive today on the planet, the desert, the jungle, the cities. We are interested in the human person, the complexity of life.' Gilbert & George

'Why do they dress so smartly? "We used to say because we never wanted to be the artists their mothers would be ashamed of, but it didn't work out quite like that."
Are their mothers ashamed of them? "No, they're very proud." says George, quickly. "We don't alienate anyone. The suits are very good because they are odd. We always get a table at a ­restaurant anywhere in the world. We're never searched at airports. Even boys on bicycles with crazy dyed hair will screech to a halt and say, "Great suits, guys!' They enable us to get away with a lot."'

The suits they wear and their presentation of their bodies is one of the main recognisable and defining features of the pair.

NIKKI S. LEE - Punk Project Series

Nikki Lee is a performance artist come photographer.
The punk project is a series of photographs of Lee in disguise, becoming different members of communities. She addresses identity and 'place'. Who we are who we surround ourselves with, and how that is perceived by others. She transforms herself and places herself within the image, performing identity.
The photographs are capturing 'non-moments' – a snapshot that might trigger a time and place in personal memory for the participants or their circle of friends, but for those outside of this circle, the picture is a just snapshot.

"Her images dig deep into the construction of community and ego, of social roles and what it means to be self-defined and/or categorized by someone else. She ultimately asks, are personal identity and communal identity fluid?"

The  Senior Project (14) 1999

The Drag Queen Project (2) 1997

The act of questioning what the photo is about is the key thing here. You don't realise Lee is pretending, you assume she is just part of the photo and you wonder what the fuss about and what makes this art. It's only when you see the series together and recognise the same face camouflaging so well into each of the backgrounds, that you can appreciate the art.

I like the accessibility of Lee's art. A lot of people are skeptical about performance art. Here, the whole act of researching, transforming and becoming is condensed into one portrait. The audience is likely familiar with the other subject matters, and how they act, so we begin thinking about how she would have been acting to fit in, or at least I do.

Lee has used clothes and makeup to transform herself into each character and social group. But what is the difference between what she does, and what we each do everyday in the morning. We assign ourselves our specific group of society, and dress to fit that stereotype.

"It is not the case that an individual is first a skinhead and then wears all the gear, but that the gear constitutes the individual as a skinhead. It is the social interacting, by means of the clothing, that produces the individual as a member of the group rather than vice-versa, that one is member of the group and then interacts socially" [p.32 Fashion as Communication]

CREATIVE RESPONSE TO WEEK TWO

After exploring Bart Hess' work I started thinking about new ways I could project clothing , without it being textile.

By using a food product i'm also bringing to light ideas of wastage.
Often people don't think about the effects that clothes wastage have on the world around them.
Food wastage seems to be a clearer wrong-doing to the general public because, along with water, it's one of the few true necessities of survival.
As i'm addressing in my written exploration, 'disposable' clothing is indirectly causing a lot of other problems, including underpayment which means poverty. So those supporting fast fashion, but slamming food wastage are hypocritical.

My food wastage is incredibly low, if not non-existant. This is because of my up-bringing. Although I did feel guilty, I see my housemates and people around me throwing food away without having had any use at all which is a lot harder to accept.

The cucumbers take the place of trousers … how the represent wastage and one time use etc

WEEK TWO - LUCY AND BART + BART HESS

Leading on from last week, I wanted to investigate more unusual body coverings and whether they classified as fashion or art.

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\\LUCY AND BART//

About the Artists :

“Lucyandbart” is a collaboration between artists Lucy McRae and Bart Hess. In it they imagine human bodies and faces physically altered with a shocking but artistic realism. Globules of foam, asymmetric spines… fascinating and repugnant simultaneously, the pictures become even more disturbing because they don’t hint at the emotional state of the subject. Each transformed human looks blankly back at you, neither horrified or surprised or excited about their change of form, but merely present and allowing it to be shown to you."

Dripping Colour

This and 'evolution' below have a 'found object' and recycling appearance, using familiar objects to create new shapes and characters. The pair aren't just photographing models they're creating new people by posing and building out the bodies underneath. It feels like an illustration, photography and fashion are it's mediums but it can't be classed under either title. 

Evolution 

 Although typically clothing (you can see the tights seams and structure) you don't directly associate this with fashion. I think the photography/filming plays a big part in Lucy and Barts projection of an idea. I can see similarities between their creations and haute couture fashion on the catwalk but their main aim isn't to shape and cover the body.

Exploded View

Germination Day One

Germination Day Eight

Grow on You

One of my favourite ideals of their art is its' not permanent. I think that's the key differentiation between their artwork and fashion. Clothing stays marginally the same throughout its life, with particular materials wearing apart but staying recognisable. Although not all of their work is textile, it still provides a valid reasoning that body coverage doesn't have to be strictly clothing.

Is the work Fashion or Art?

Most definitely art. No traditional textile materials are used and the materials are sculpted onto the body. They seem constructed as an art piece with a specific outcome in mind, which relies on the bodies being posed and photographed. Particularly in 'exploded view'. The outfits could not be worn for extended amounts of time and are clearly never intended for use as clothing or fashion, even if toned down. What I plan to do in one of my own investigations is along a similar theme of applying abstract onto the body, but concentrating on how the outfit affects the body and senses. 

They work entirely from instinct and exploration with no preconceived idea of the end product. After reading up on what makes art, art, spontaneity is one of the main differences between a craft and fine art. Craft is meticulously planned, and in fashion sense - altered, arranged, redone and then toned down for multiple different versions. Art is a one off, an expression of an individual or group.

Below on their collaboration with a stylist, they've paired their artwork with textiles which provides a direct comparison between the two mediums. Although they compliment each other, they're wildly different. Being worn next to sharp uncomfortable objects, the trousers look much more comfortable than they would on an undecorated body. 

Like the china polo shirt by LI, Lucy and Bart have also worked with high end fashion brands to advertise and present their clothing...

AnOtherMan

"In a fusion of contemporary fashion and the human form, celebrated stylist Alister Mackie collaborates with avant-garde artists Lucy McRae and Bart Hess of LucyandBart to fashion sculptural, surreal extensions of the body – paired with animalistic outerwear from the A/W 2010 collections. The artistic duo LucyandBart are known for whimsical manipulations of the human body, and they love to use outlandish materials like foam and beds of grass. Though their elaborate pieces of art seem meticulously calculated, you’ll be surprised to find that the duo works entirely from instinct and exploration, with no preconceived concept of the end product. Normally, Lucy and Bart play the parts of both model and photographer interchangeably, but this time, Nick Knight will be behind the lens capturing the spectacle to grace the pages of the A/W 2010 issue of AnOther Man alongside fashions from Rick Owens, Comme des Garçons and Vivienne Westwood."

\\BART HESS//

Slime

Mutants

On his own, the work gets a little darker, more alien-like, especially with the hidden faces. With a material that isn't neat in the slightest, it simply can't be planned or touched up, Hess would have had to work directly and spontaneously onto the model. 

It changes my perception of the work knowing that most of Hess's solo work is commissioned, whereas the duo were being immediately creative with no direction. In that sense i think it's slightly less in the realm of fine art and he would be working more under an illustrators title.

This reminds me of Boo Ritsons album cover she did for the Maccabees, using her traditional style of slopped paint on portraits. 

SIMILAR ARTIST - MARCUS COATES

(1968 − ), Mayfly, Ephemeroptera (Subimago stage) Self Portait, flour and water, 2013, courtesy of British Council 

Creative Response to week one

WEEK ONE - LI XIAOFENG + HECTOR HERNANDEZ

To begin I've looked at artists that suggest clothing but by using much harsher, uncomfortable materials
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 LI XIAOFENG

'Made in China' series

What do I think of his work?

I'm a big fan. I love any work that you can see the time and effort engrained into. I prefer the work he's done that includes a figure. What Xiaofeng is trying to say with his use of antique china I feel is enhanced by the use of a body within the clothing. I get more of a sense of history from these sculptures, even if they are a little more obvious. I think if the clothing was made more obviously antique then it would work better. I'm very inspired by his use of material though. I've been thinking about what makes clothing fine art - by changing the person wearing the clothes, the environment around them, the materials they're made from etc. I think changing materials is probably the most direct way to step away from fashion into fine art.

Is it considered fine art?

The pieces are created from broken porcelain that he sources from ancient archeological digs. He shapes, polishes, then drills holes into each piece to string them together with silver wire. He classes the process as 'rearranging landscapes'. The pieces are usually in the form of clothing, traditional Chinese dresses and jackets, as well as military uniforms. Although each piece would have to be meticulously planned and constructed - a process which some class as a definition of craft -, the history and intent behind each piece, as well as each sculptures uniqueness, stops it from being a mundane activity.

Does it count as textiles?

They are technically wearable, but would take a lot of reconstruction and help to enter the clothing. It's similar to armour, and in the same realm as 'clothing' like Franc Fernandez's 2010 meat dress, worn by Lady Gaga.

He was commissioned by the clothing brand Lacoste in 2010 to design polo shirts that reflected his sculptural style. For this, he photographed the china and assembled it digitally. Although not as impactful as the original sculptures, it creates a garment that has a lot more history and meaning than most.

I plan to do a similar thing in my own experimentation. By using a scale of pieces - starting off with the highly abstract and toning it down in steps until you're left with a piece of clothing adept for the high street. I can then ask a varied audience which of the pieces they consider fine art, and when it slips into merely being a piece of clothing.

“For the limited edition printed polo, he chose blue and white shards with lotus and children designs from the Kangxi Period (1662 – 1772 AD) of the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1911 AD). The lotus grows from mud underwater to emerge as a flower, symbolising purity and rebirth. Images of babies represent fertility, as during that period the high infant mortality rate meant that people decorated ceramics with babies hoping they would be blessed with children.” (Official press via Lacoste)

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HECTOR HERNANDEZ

Using a similar theme to Xiaofeng is Hernandez. By placing irregular materials on a body to cover the models modesty, it turns them into clothing in the viewers eyes. This sheet of metal, that we recognise as harsh, sharp and jagged, has been sculpted in such a way to suggest fluidity. I think a lot of breaching the gap between clothing and art is by falsifying materials and disguising their original characteristics. Bart Hess uses this a lot, and creates video that shows how the use of material affects movement and behaviour.

The photo has a childlike nature with the relaxed pose, widely placed feet and the hiding of the face. Similar to animals, young children would find this calming if stressed because they can no longer see what's upsetting them.

Presentation

An Investigation Into The Purpose And Meaning Of Clothing, In Relation To Females And Identity in relation to...

•Clothing's’ representation of female status throughout history.

•How performance art can improve the value and worth of clothing to an individual.

•The development of technology and its effect on the way we view clothes.

Clothing's’ representation of female status throughout history.

Fashion began with women being used as their husbands showgirl. The more expensive the material and bigger the bustles on the woman, the wealthier the man. And women had no power.

Body deforming corsetry was used to reach unrealistic body ideals for the benefits of the men until the 1920s when corseted dresses were abandoned for comfort and separates, as women also gained more rights and freedom

The 60s welcomed androgynous dress, symbolizing women's continual rise to equality.

In the modern day we now have complete freedom as women, and freedom of choice in clothing too. But the majority of us still choose to follow fashions, which are usually designed and dictated by men. I disagree with this and plan to investigate what the alternatives are.

The development of technology and its effect on the way we view clothes.

Just a few decades ago, you’d have to save for months to afford a new item of clothing. Then you’d often alter and patch it to keep it wearable for the rest of your life.

Now, with the introduction of fast machines and exploitation in sweatshops, we can buy new clothes for less than the hourly minimum wage.

Not only does this makes us wasteful but it’s encouraging a loss of identity.

This cheap clothing is causing people to suppress their beliefs and morals for the sake of a new outfit every week.

For example

People who say they love children are wearing dresses made by one, and

Those who pride themselves on recycling buy new clothes instead of mending the ones they already have.

It’s argued that a lot of people with less money have no choice about buying cheap.

But a good quality jumper that costs a little bit more, will probably last ten times the length of a cheaper alternative.

How performance art can improve the value and worth of clothing to an individual.

Performance art in my eyes is anything from Northampton Clown, to those critically acclaimed for it like Leigh Bowery, to you and I dressing up at Halloween.

Wearing different clothes makes us act differently. Whether it’s putting on confidence in the form of a suit for work. Or wearing your sisters top on a night out so only drinking clear drinks in case of a spillage.

I’m looking into how performance art can allow us to look at clothing in a new light , and what more we can get from it than simply following a fashion.

Raquel Guimaraes

Being proud of where our clothes come from should also cause us to act differently

When Brazilian fashion designer Raquel Guimaraes struggled to find knitters for her new knitwear brand, she decided to train inmates at a high security prison to knit for her.

By improving the inmates behavior, prospects and reducing their sentences, she’s created a piece of clothing that’s much more valuable. In both monetary and expressive terms.

It’s also, in my opinion, a type of performance art due to the use of action to influence her outcome.

I believe a lot of fashion brands are wasting their power of influence by producing visually pleasing, but shallow, garments.

Li Xiaofeng

Li is the opposite of shallow. He is an appropriation artist that uses broken porcelain from ancient archeological digs to create sculptures of clothing.

Although technically wearable, the main aim of the sculptures is not to cover or comfort, but to tell a story.

He was commissioned by Lacoste to reproduce his artwork onto shirts. But the story and the meaning is lost without seeing the original porcelain.

The specific type of ceramics he chose reflected a design only used by the upper class in the Qing Dynasty. So the shirt represents exclusivity and wealth which is fitting.

This process of working the un-wearable into the everyday mirrors the usual fashion process of dulling down haute couture into high street.

It gives example of the way production methods will change from handcrafted to mechanically produced.

The technology takes away the skill and individuality, leaving you with something mass produced and un-original, that you will then choose to wear to express your identity.

Creative Response

I started thinking about how I could make clothing that explores showing personality in a visual way

Although clothes are apparently a method of expressing our personalities and feelings,

women often take it as their role to stay strong and resolute at all times

A great deal of women use clothes alongside make-up to put on a cheerful face and conceal any stress they may be facing.

Being dressed in heavy weighted clothing would contort the body into physically showing the strain they’re under.

I was inspired by my mum who like many other women, keeps any negative emotions hidden.

Each sack will be weighted, and printed with a pattern that links to clothing from a certain time or event in my mums life.

The weighted balls are a visual representation of feeling emotionally dragged down.

Combining performance with clothing will hopefully lead to a better understanding of clothing and it’s possibilities.

Feedback:

Further investigate the clothes from my Mother and the clothes from each time period - I've scanned in pictures of all my mothers favourite clothes throughout her life, and she's talked about different trends. But this isn't really relevant to this piece. It's more referencing to the memories behind personal pieces of clothing rather than the relation to fashions. There is no real link between any of her experiences and the time period or happenings at the time. That's why there is only a vague print or pattern. There are some hints of links between period and pattern but it's more of a personal interpretation from the clothes to the wearer rather than an obvious timeline. And to show a clear link between clothing, memories and identity.

Taper the themes down - I plan to only touch on the three themes within a more directed argument.