Elizabeth Delfs: 3 ROOMS - Object, Design and The Body - Exhibition Installation

It has taken me a silly long time to get these images posted but better late than never! So these are installations shots from the exhibition I participated in Singapore, 3 ROOMS - OBJECT, DESIGN + THE BODY at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Singapore. The gallery also produced a very smart catalogue, please email me at info@elizabethdelfs.com if you would like to have one, or I can email you a PDF version.

Exhibition co-curators Anne Farren and Emily Wills invited three Western Australian designer/artists to contribute, all of whom are young creatives whom "represent a young genre of makers who are reexamining the nature of the fashion object and its presentation". In addition to myself, Jocelyn Tan And Alistair Yiap were selected. Students from Curtin University and LASALLE College of the Arts were then invited to respond to our work, and asked to consider the "process of fashion design by adapting traditional methods of garment construction and engaging in methods of investigation to move fashion away from existing ties with garment production". Below are the installation shots from the key designers as well as a selection of student work which I was particularly impressed by.

"As fashion is being presented internationally in galleries, museums and in public spaces as much as on the runway, it also has the potential to have greater impact conceptually that is also reflected on itself, and on people, bodies, identities, ethics, aesthetics and notions of beauty - the very stuff, in fact, that fashion is really made of".

- Hazel Clark, Conceptual Fashion in Fashion and Art by Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas (eds) London, Berg, as refernced in the catalogue 3 ROOMS - OBJECT, DESIGN + THE BODY

Imogene Spencer - Subconscious Skin

Curtin University, Western Australia

This series by Curtin student Imogene was stunning - she used dispersal dyes painted onto transfer to create the pools of colours on a synthetic material, and then manually etched lace pattern work through the garment using a soldering iron (a burn out process), around and through the print. The uneven hems echo the print pattern.

Fabric detail

The photographic documentation was very professional and high quality also!

Lauren Sims - Micro

Curtin University, Western Australia

Heat etched lace work integrated with a organic pleating, all done by hand. This work is such a great example of how textile manipulation is key to the design outcome, which so many commercial designers forget about.The combination creates a sophisticated sculptural outcome and abject beauty.

Ariana Davis - Atanga

Curtin University, Western Australia

Jocelyn Tan - Key Designer

Western Australia

The above three students work is a response to designer Jocelyn Tans' installation. Tans' work "investigates the space between garment and accessory and the slippages between retail and exhibition display". Her work is often interactive - in its passive state, each piece is a beautiful object, and when activated by the wearer, there is often a cheeky function and interplay. A necklace which is also a pencil box; a cap, to cover the head, is covered in hair; or an accessory which also is a makeup applicator. Objects are also unisex and suggest "altered ways of making / wearing / using".