North: Fashioning Identity @ Somerset House
I visited the North: Fashioning Identity exhibition at Somerset House to collect ideas around how I can research within fashion and culture and curate a creative outcome. The exhibition was curated by Lou Stoppard and Adam Murray, and Lou Stoppard is a constant source of inspiration to me in the fashion journalism and curation world. The exhibition was a vast, detailed display of how the fashion and art industry has taken inspiration from the culture and history of the north of England.
The exhibition space was curated into sections that unpick different areas of how the North is depicted and drawn up – looking first at documentary and fashion photography throughout the ages that has featured recognisable symbols and stereotypes (architecture and landscape, ‘the quintessential Northern woman’ and the Northern family and lifestyle).
I N F I N I T Y ‘ 1 7 b y A l a s d a i r M c L e l l a n
A part of the exhibition I enjoyed the most was a film commissioned specially for the exhibition, by Alasdair McLellan, titled Infinity ’17. The film was shown on a repetitive loop featuring the themes of Northern culture that are often used in fashion, such as youth subculture, heteronormative stereotypes of gender, music, the industrial and rural landscape. This film really inspired me to think about montaging imagery to create meaningful and thoughtful work around particular topics or areas of investigation that I choose to look at.
Another area of the exhibition that caught my eye was the area on magazines and styling. ‘Style magazines’ that appeared in the 1980s promoted real life style rather than catwalk and high-fashion pieces. Editorials can now street cast models and use intriguing locations and settings to create recognisable and comforting narratives for readers.
J A S O N E V A N S s t r e e t s t y l e p h o t o g r a p h y
As I want my publication to be more of an ‘anti-fashion’ magazine, focusing on personal style and actually perhaps mocking designer or popular trends, street style could be an interesting way of looking at this. Jason Evans states how he ‘[documents] street culture and regional style variants for design and marketing consultancies’, showing the diversity across England in the way people choose to dress, from brands to shape, colour and formality.
This area at the end of the exhibition was particularly interesting, consisting of films by SHOWstudio that interview creative figures from the North about the area they were brought up in. Each film was shown on a screen in a small curated space that reflected the themes, lifestyle and spaces the interviewee talked about. The interview audio was played alongside videos of Google Streetview showing ‘an immersive street-level documentation of contributors’ origins’. I thought this was a really innovative method of journalism and documentation, displaying interviews as an interactive space and experience rather than simply a transcript or film.
This exhibition was an especially useful way for me to research into the curation of a fashion space – even though I am intending to create a publication I think the curation of printed matter and exhibitions goes hand in hand – when looking at quite a niche area of culture, art and lifestyle. I’ve always appreciated Lou Stoppard’s projects looking into intriguing areas of gender, lifestyle and fashion, and this exhibition was a great example of how to pull research and ideas from publications, fashion design, music, popular and club culture, photography and film, to create a well-rounded and creative response. Since visiting this exhibition I have thought a lot about different media and research processes I can take forward in my final major project, and have realised that although I will be working on a piece of printed work, that should not limit me to explore all areas of art, fashion and lifestyle in my research and progression of ideas.