You might be wondering why I'm revisiting a dress from Marios Schwab's A/W 08-09 collection, one of his most provocative I think in both symbolism and silhouette. The Craft Council have craftily acquired the dress above dubbed Dress09 from the collection and have asked artist Tom Gallant, who worked with Schwab on the dress on the print and cut-out technique to curate an online exhibition entitled 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. This makes it all too tempting to delve into the collaborative facet of the collection and to research and relish Gallant's handiwork.
It's no easy feat to communicate the atmosphere and intricacies of a visual exhibition online but in this case, Gallant takes us through the various influence points that led him to both to his own work as a pattern-based artist as well as the prints and cut-outs for the Marios Schwab dress. With the aid of Vimeo videos and images as well as supporting text written by him and other sources, Schwab's collection lives on in this absorbing exhibition, as well as encouraging the viewer to go off on their own curiosity tangents. The gothic novella The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 was cited by Schwab as an inspiration for his A/W 08-09 collection but Gallant claims that this tale about a woman imprisoned by her own mind and her husband has been central to his own direction as an artist leading to the making of Dress 09.
The obvious starting point for his work is the art of Chinese papercutting, which dates back to the sixth century.
"I had a eureka moment from a gift, a book of Chinese paper cuts. I was instantly drawn to the ability of this art to transcend cultural differences and material stereotypes. Paper cuts are both ancient and modern, fragile and powerful."
Gallant is also moved by hand-made animations by the likes of Lotte Reiniger who used cut silhouettes to create the first feature length animated film ever - Prince Achmed in 1926.
"When watching hand-made animations, I am always incredulous at the amount of time involved, never-mind the skill, in making the film."
Collector V is part of a series of Gallant's works which evolve in aesthetics but mainly stick to the themes of contrasting beauty with the erotic and obscene. Gallant was working on Collector V whilst developing the prints for Schwab's A/W 08-09 collection. Pornographic magazines are layered beneath carefully cut replications of cloth and cloaked figurations, sourced from Gustave Doré’s illustrations for the Bible then animated into a 3-D large-scale work. The hints of flesh in between the lines draw you in as well as emphasising the subject matter's banality through repetition.
Furniture designer Gareth Neal's work and in particular the table Anne (2009) also greatly influenced Gallant.
"What I admire in design is the investigation into materials and techniques, especially when this results in objects that show their development in their final state."
The William Morris-esque pattern that you can make out in the final cut-outs for Schwab and Gallant's collaborative work has its roots in Gallant's earlier series Collector III. This piece Iris follows a repeat pattern using more pornographic magazines, with flowers and birds layered on top, allowing a pattern to spread and grow into a recogniable female silhouette.
This photograph Faustian Nightmares by Nick Waplington neatly illustrates the physical theme of The Yellow Wallpaper whilst not being directly linked to it.
"I have always been drawn to this image and have always been unsure whether it shows a moment captured or part of a long process, taking in each angle and detail, framing the distortion of the space and removing our ability to pin down scale and orientation."
Then we have the final resulting shebang. The exhibition reveals a 360-degree spin on Dress 09. Schwab's entire collection played with the idea of revealing flesh and layers in a way that is both sensual and repressed at the same time. By covering it up, the silhouette rather than the body is celebrated. Together with Gallant, Schwab dissected fabrics to create layers of flesh and print and in their collaboration created a series of dresses where William Morris cut-outs are layered on top of pornographic magazines to hard hittingly question the West's fascination with pornography.
Here are the other pieces in the collection which show Gallant's handiwork. It's an interesting collaboration whereby the designer is so inspired by the artist that the themes of Gallant's work infiltrates the resulting collection. It's not just a straightforward cold case of designer commissioning an artist as a way of achieving his aesthetic needs. Rather this is a give-and-take collaboration where Schwab's talent of female form-making in clothes ties in with Gallant's own trajectory in both theme and skill. I didn't see the collaboration in such detail at the time when the collection came out but this mini-site sheds light on an artist whose work I think could do with being in a fashion context more.
In fact the very fact that this exhibition centres not around Gallant's own independent art work but around the Marios Schwab collaboration as well as this Gallant quote here "I was able to step back from the collections with a more open approach to my methods and it has fostered a desire to continue working in his field." communicates his intent clearly. Not that Gallant's work needs fashion to convey his message but I'd love to see whether he takes more leaps towards that direction.
(From top: Collector I - Moths 2004, Parkfeuer 2004, Collector II - Chrysanthemum 2005, Wandle Detail 2005, Collector III - Iris 2006, Acanthus Detail 2006, Collector VI - British Birds, Collector IX - Old Game Birds)
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