Various contemporary artists and designers like Grayson Perry, Alexander McQueen and Yoko Ono have used clothing as a mechanism to communicate and reveal elements of our identity, consciously and unconsciously, to express status, aspiration and desire.
The exhibition is divided into 4 sections; Storytelling, Building, Belonging and Confronting and Performance.
Hussein Chalayan's piece "Son of Sonzai Suru" was particularly powerful and quite eerie.
It forms a provocative comment on the fashion system with his mannequin, which is silently manipulated by shadowlike puppeteers. The tableau is inspired by the 300-year-old Japanese tradition of Bunraku, a type of puppet theatre, but it contains a very contemporary message about who pulls the strings in the modern fashion world.
I also loved the dress "Widow" by Susie MacMurray. An elaborate dress made with thousands of stitching needles with their points exposed. It shimmers like cheap tinsel but makes clear an aggressive message of defensiveness.
Another favourite was the wall mural called "Little Rich Girls" by Yinka Shonibare a British-Nigerian artist. Shonibare presents a wall mural of Victorian girl’s dresses manufactured in colourful fabrics with Dutch wax prints, which are normally worn by sections of the African community on festive occasions. They remind us of the ever-present racial divide, and the legacy of European influence over African identity in the colonial age, while at the same time remaining beautiful, meticulously crafted gowns.
It was a very thought provoking exhibition and well worth a visit just to look at some of the visually stunning pieces.
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