Sharing Process
By Jo Phillips
Creativity, some say in a bold statement will be what heals our world. The pure act of bringing something new into perspective in physical terms in emotion allows for all people to engage and potentially change a mood or even a mind. Creativity is a powerful force mostly for good. So when a powerhouse brand like Alexander McQueen partners up with other creatives you know this is a project worth seeing. Find out more in Sharing process, Here
Image on Left Jackie Nickerson
Another of the pure joys of the creative process allows for multiple perspectives, many interpretations of an idea. This is exactly what Alexander McQueen did by inviting a diverse group of twelve artists to express their individual working practices inspired by the Autumn/Winter 2022 women’s pre-collection.
Each artist responded to one outfit from the a/w 22 collection and then bought to the table their interpretation and response. Like a call and response in a piece of music, the energy is breathtaking; the result beautiful. The whole project is called Process and the artists included are:-
Ann Cathrin November Høibo, Beverly Semmes, Bingyi, Cristina de Middel Guinevere van Seenus, Hope Gangloff, Marcia Kure
Jackie Nickerson, Jennie Jieun Lee, Judas Companion, Marcela Correa
and Marcia Michael
Not to spoil it but a few stand out pieces include:-
Marcia Kure
A dress with a deep V-neckline, godet panels and silver bullion, metal thread, bead, sequin and crystal graffiti embroidery on a black Chantilly lace base.
A mixed-media artist and sculptor based in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, and Abuja and Kaduna, Nigeria. She says
“The body is a communication device. The script, text, and graffiti on the embroidered garment recall Vai (Liberia), Bamun (Cameroon), Nsibidi and Uli script and body painting of southeastern Nigeria. These lines, glyphs, pictographs and scripts, transform and morph into mapping and trading systems that link naturally derived pigments to bodies, migration, labour, trade, and capital. The lines merge century-old trading systems – between Africa, Europe,and America -with modern-day ones, collapsing time and space, fusing histories, and systems of power and production that in turn – become body, an abstracted body – a portrait of Queen Amina (1533-1610), the warrior ruler of the Hausa State of Zazzau.The Amina Project includes one large scale drawing ‘Amina’; eighteen sculptures of relics, fragmentsand artifacts that represent death, carnage and spoils of war in the form of hair fascinators and four small scale drawings of imaginary members of Queen Amina’s court.”
Marcela Correa is an artist and sculptor based in Chile.
Women’s Off-the-shoulder Corset Dress in Pop Yellow
And she talks of her piece:-
“This work is born as a result of a solo development making a series of small models built as three-dimensional collages based on glued paper, magazine clippings, epoxy resin and fiberglass. It began in the midst of the pandemic, and perhaps for this reason it is about absent faces and broken memories. The work takes a long time to execute, placing successive material layers where each one of them provides new information, gives more life. It is my first three-dimensional pictorial work so it is maybe the beginning of a new stage. The materials interest me as a fieldof research and not as formal results. This exercise, especially thanks to the intensive use of colour as a three-dimensional material, opens new doors, new research.”
Jackie Nickerson, whose image and below is on the left is an American-born British artist who lives and works in London and Ireland.
Women’s Off-the-shoulder Corset Dress in Warm Orange
She uses photography to materialise her thinking. Her research-based practise stems from extensive, years-long study of histories, processes, places, and peoples before she introduces her camera into the space. “The inspiration for this piece was twofold – Alexander McQueen’s love of nature and Sarah Burton’s design silhouette and her description of her designs being ‘soft armour for women’. The materials I used are a reference to the sea and the challenges we face with marine pollution. I used a recyclable, expandable type of packing paper to represent global trade in relation to our carbon footprint. The material is laser cut to create an expandable quality that resembles a net – in reference to unsustainable aquaculture. I also used seaweed to represent the natural world.”
And finally as a preview
Judas Companion is an artist based in London. The Judas Companion label aims to unite art and fashion through the creation of wearable structures.
“Judas Companion is the alter ego I created in 2016. My work revolves around metamorphosis in the widest sense. I paint, I make masks, I photograph and film myself visualising processes of transformation. I turn my inner world outside and make emotional turmoil visible. Via wearing masks I express myself on a deeper level and develop work that derives directly from my subconscious.
This project was conceived by the creative director Sarah Buron but the whole McQueen design team imputed ideas. She says
“I wanted to engage in a new creative dialogue with the collection this season and see how the artists interpreted the work that we created in the studio. It’s been very interesting to see how creativity has sprung from so many different perspectives and the outcomes that have been varied and beautiful. We wanted the artists to have total freedom to respond to the looks, creating bold and thought-provoking conversations with their works. I hope that viewers will be as inspired as we have all been by witnessing these creative processes.”
The artworks were conceived to be displayed alongside the McQueen pieces they relate to. See them all in a temporary installation designed to showcase the individual approaches and the ways in which artworks and looks interact in the Old Bond Street store, London.
Art and fashion will always be great bedfellows, one can feed off the other and vice versa sharing ideas and giving creative freedom for ideas to flourish, what could be better.
Find out more at AlexanderMcqueen.com Here but best of all go and visit the pop up in the 27 store Old Bond Street 27 London W1S 4QE
If you enjoyed reading Sharing Process why not read the Poem from Marcia Kure for this project here
.Cent magazine, London. Be Inspired;Get Involved
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