Sarah Turner
“This black, floor-length laser-cut dress was made by the artist Tom Gallant in collaboration with fashion designer Marios Schwab for their 2008-09 autumn-winter collection.
Gallant has a strong craft sensitivity and his work draws from a very wide range of historic and contemporary sources. He is particularly driven by paper and lasercutting, printmaking and the Victorian decorative arts in general and William Morris wallpaper in particular.
The dress has an underlayer of printed silk crepe with a design based on a Morris pattern and made from images cut from pornographic magazines. Although some of the skin tones are plainly visible, the treatment transforms the obscene imagery into very beautiful textures. The top layer is another Gallant design in laser-cut silk.
Although the Crafts Council doesn’t normally collect fashion items, we acquired this piece last year as we were interested in the intricacy of the work.
We also asked Gallant to curate an exhibition designed to reveal some of his inspirations and he chose to base it on a gothic novella, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It’s the story of a Victorian wife who is imprisoned in a mansion by her husband.
Danson House is a magnificent 18th-century villa built for the Boyd family who grew rich from their sugar plantations.
A site-specific installation by Fiona Curran reflects the Boyds’ wealthy Georgian family history as well as The Yellow Wallpaper’s opening reference to a ‘colonial mansion, a hereditary estate’.
The laser-cut plywood and shellac construction climbs up the walls and around the windows of John Boyd’s bedroom windows with decorative detailing made from icing sugar.
The other site-specific work is Ligia Bouton’s Adventures of William Morris Man, an installation in pencil, ink, graphite and gold leaf on digital prints. It mixes wallpaper motifs and comicbook imagery to tell the fantastic story of how the designer superhero fought the excesses of Victorian fashions.
Placing this show in a building like Danson House where it can have such a resonance is a new approach for the council’s exhibition programme. We hope it will lead to similar exhibitions in other non-traditional gallery venues in the future.”
The Yellow Wallpaper runs at Danson House in Bexleyheath until 29 October
Sarah Turner is an exhibitions officer at the Crafts Council, London
“This black, floor-length laser-cut dress was made by the artist Tom Gallant in collaboration with fashion designer Marios Schwab for their 2008-09 autumn-winter collection.
Gallant has a strong craft sensitivity and his work draws from a very wide range of historic and contemporary sources. He is particularly driven by paper and lasercutting, printmaking and the Victorian decorative arts in general and William Morris wallpaper in particular.
The dress has an underlayer of printed silk crepe with a design based on a Morris pattern and made from images cut from pornographic magazines. Although some of the skin tones are plainly visible, the treatment transforms the obscene imagery into very beautiful textures. The top layer is another Gallant design in laser-cut silk.
Although the Crafts Council doesn’t normally collect fashion items, we acquired this piece last year as we were interested in the intricacy of the work.
We also asked Gallant to curate an exhibition designed to reveal some of his inspirations and he chose to base it on a gothic novella, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It’s the story of a Victorian wife who is imprisoned in a mansion by her husband.
Danson House is a magnificent 18th-century villa built for the Boyd family who grew rich from their sugar plantations.
A site-specific installation by Fiona Curran reflects the Boyds’ wealthy Georgian family history as well as The Yellow Wallpaper’s opening reference to a ‘colonial mansion, a hereditary estate’.
The laser-cut plywood and shellac construction climbs up the walls and around the windows of John Boyd’s bedroom windows with decorative detailing made from icing sugar.
The other site-specific work is Ligia Bouton’s Adventures of William Morris Man, an installation in pencil, ink, graphite and gold leaf on digital prints. It mixes wallpaper motifs and comicbook imagery to tell the fantastic story of how the designer superhero fought the excesses of Victorian fashions.
Placing this show in a building like Danson House where it can have such a resonance is a new approach for the council’s exhibition programme. We hope it will lead to similar exhibitions in other non-traditional gallery venues in the future.”
The Yellow Wallpaper runs at Danson House in Bexleyheath until 29 October
Sarah Turner is an exhibitions officer at the Crafts Council, London
