Exhibition Diary: The rest of the set up

Day two of the set up was all about the details of the exhibition- from titles and panels to mounting garments and setting up lighting. The momentum seemed to grow with each installation that was mounted and finished. Ideas that had only existed in our imaginations began to take shape and there was a real buzz in the room as we added the lights and the final touches.

 Fabiana tracing out the titles.

 Hayley mounting Eva van Aalst's paradoxical shoes.

       Emma, Cecilie and Niamh mounting Hiroko Nakagima's surreal picture frame dress. 

Fabiana, Giulia and Cecilie drawing lines around a display.

We open today!

Looking Twice will open today at 12 noon. So come along any time between 12-7.

Here's the flyer again with the travel information (click to enlarge) :

Unfortunately Mornington Crescent is closed today due to weekend engineering works. You can get the Bank Branch of the Northern Line to Camden Town. The Collective is about a 7-8 minute walk south down Camden High Street or you can travel to Euston Station (walk north up Eversholt Street) or Warren Street (walk north up Hamstead Road) which are both 12-15 minutes walk away and on main bus routes. 

The buses you can catch to get to Looking Twice are 24, 27, 29, 46, 88, 134, 168, 214, 253.

We're looking forward to seeing you all there!

Exhibition Diary: Day 1 - the set up

Would-be curators might find it a bit of a shock to be up a ladder trying to work out how to attach something to the wall or with a paint brush in hand tackling a Victorian warehouse wall, that just doesn't seem to want to be painted. But unfortunately there aren't little exhibition elves who come and set up for you exactly as you've planned....curating is not just about research and the logic of an exhibition, its realisation as well. So undaunted the Looking Twice team arrived in the Collective yesterday armed with paint brushes, gaffer tape and fishing wire a plenty.

Here's a sneak preview of how we're getting on!

 Painting the wall that seems to repel paint!

 Our pride and joy- the curtains!

Fabiola, May, Giulia, Fabiana and Emma with the last curtain.

If you want to see the fruits of our labour come down to Collective Gallery, Camden High Street (Mornington Crescent end) between Sunday and Wednesday (12-7 apart from Tues 12-6) !

The Grand Total

We would like to say a big thank you to the 84 generous benefactors of Looking Twice who have raised (drum roll....)

£938.80.

A fantastic total and every penny has contributed towards making our exhibition a reality. Without your support this project would not have been possible. We look forward to seeing you at the exhibition!

  

A sneaky peak at the fifth designer

In her graduation collection at Edinburgh College of Art Charlotte Helyar created a virtual reality in dress by using hand and digital screen printed fabrics, that create a further dimension when viewed through 3D glasses. Fittingly named 'Decadent Dystopia' the collection's mind warping prints were inspired by retro-futurism and the disingenuous utopia that these images offered. 

The idea of retro-futurism- the past seen from the future, the future seen from the past- is an interesting concept for the curator who is constantly trying the make the past relevant to the future. Charlotte's sci-fi take on fashion not only makes a comment on perspectives on the past and future but also on our perspective in situ. Her prints leap out at or recede from the viewer playing with the boundary between two and three dimensions. Not only that but she manages to make 3D glasses look trendy. 

 One of Charlotte's pieces on the catwalk at Graduate Fashion Week

A close up of one of those incredible prints.

Charlotte is now studying for a Masters at Central Saint Martin's, specialising in print. With work experience racked up at Alexander McQueen and Red or Dead expect to see Charlotte's prints on a catwalk near you soon!

What is Fashion Curation?

Let’s start with curation. Despite the red squiggly line your word processor draws under it curation is a word. It refers to the work done in museums and galleries all over the world from collecting objects to researching and displaying them. Curators can be very specialized or cover a broad area but fashion curation is one of these specializations.

Fashion curation deals specifically with dress but can also take in ‘fashion’ in its broadest sense- fashion photography, fashion prints and illustrations, accessories, textiles and all sorts of cultural material relating to fashion.

MA Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion is the only fashion specific curatorial course in the world. Course Director Shaun Cole, who was a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum for fifteen years, describes the course in the following way

    “

MA Fashion Curation is a unique course that offers an opportunity for individuals to investigate Fashion Curation as a professional practice informed from a number of perspectives including fashion design, fine art, photography, publishing, marketing, retail design, exhibition design and architecture. The course is structured to simultaneously integrate the academic study of fashion curation and enquiry into contemporary curating with practical approaches to the discipline, through the exploration of real, hypothetical and virtual contexts. Specialist units offer the fast pace of live industrial projects and the rigour of academic research that mark the tempo of contemporary practice.

                                                                                     ”

To find out more about the course and perhaps even start your own curatorial journey click here

Teaching on the course comes from a startling number of different practioners and theorists of museology and dress. For this project we are lucky enough to have the input of Judith Clark, a former Course Director of MA Fashion Curation alongside Amy de la Haye. Judith is a fashion curator and exhibition designer who has produced some of the most exciting work in the field.

To see some of Judith’s projects click here 

The advice of professional practicioners has been invaluable on this project. We would like to express our gratitude to all the lecturers that have come in to talk about their own practice and special thanks to Shaun Cole and Judith Clark.

To see what previous students of MA Fashion Curation have been up to click here

The fourth of our talented designers!

Ready for a surprise?! Hiroko Nakajima’s work can’t fail to both shock and delight. Here’s some more information on the startling work of this fashion graduate…

Hiroko is Japanese, and studied in Switzerland, New York and Tokyo, before joining the BA in Fashion Design with Knitwear course at Central Saint Martins. She graduated in 2010 and is now studying an MA in Fashion Design (Knitwear) there.

Hiroko cites her home in Japan as her inspiration. ‘I took my inspiration from my old room... I left home for a while but my mother kept my room untouched. When I came back and opened the door of my room, I felt as though my belongings, which had been abandoned for years, came back to life and welcomed me back. I wanted to express the intimate relationship between an object and its owner.’

This inspiration is clearly evident in Hiroko’s graduate collection, which featured fantastical garments that stretch the boundaries of reality.

In this example a curtain rail comes to life in the form of a dress.

Hayley Sherratt