Despite the exhibition being confined to one square room, the artists have utilized the space to display the diligent craftsmanship encompassed within each design. The boisterous hollowware is flaunted on white plinths that vary in height, allowing us to explore all facets and angles of the artwork.  Layers of aluminum are woven together to create an abstract cohesion of smooth shapes and contrasting colours. The use of aluminum is explored in a sleek and glossy manner. The harsh and urban characteristics usually associated with the material have been weakened and replaced with smooth edges and an elusive curved texture.

Exhibited in the heart of Melbourne at the Karen Woodbury Gallery, Hagerty and Foster’s aluminium designs portray unique and influential characteristics of each artist’s various practices and techniques. Hagerty’s wonderment in symbolism is liberated through Fosters utilitarian manufacturing. The exhibition encompasses lighting, standing mirrors, hollowware and mobiles – which dangle from the ceiling and whirl effortlessly creating tenuous shadows on the walls. The eccentricity of each design re-invents the urban domestic object and captures aesthetic innovation.

Foster deviates from his previous hollowware designs in this collaboration to explore a more abstract and fluid means of design and production. As the founder of the manufacturing company F!NK & Co., Foster has distributed products nationally and internationally. F!NK & Co. designs have showcased in some of the world’s major art institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

Hagerty also has a range of public and private collections held across Australia. Her artwork has exhibited at institutions such as the Ian Potter Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria and at GOMA Queensland Art Gallery. Her acrylic and oil paintings are celebrated from their optical abstraction and contrast between reality and fiction.

Through this collaboration Hagerty and Foster demonstrate the influence of individual style and preferred discipline within the production of art. The exhibition is small and concise, yet does not lack awe or innovation. Hagerty and Foster’s designs embody the glimpses of visual magnificence hidden amongst the industrialized metropolitan city.

Marie Hagerty and Robert Foster exhibit at the Karen Woodbury Gallery until March 28.

For more information about the exhibition click here. 

From the streets of London, to the house of Dior in Paris, leading lady Mademoiselle Agnès runs around on 5-inch heels, guiding us from one runway to another. Prignet has no hesitation in sticking the camera lens in the faces of fashion creatives including Jeremy Scott and Diane von Fürstenberg.

In the heart of the action, it’s only natural that the impeccably dressed Mademoiselle Agnès and her alter ego explore the business, the trends, the people, and the gossips – all in the name of fashion of course.

In a spoof-tacular reflection on the last 30 years of fashion, Mademoiselle Agnès comically explores typical women of 1984, 1994 and 2004. Placed sporadically throughout the documentary, the film begins with a hilarious characterization of the typical 1984 woman where Mademoiselle Agnès immerses into glamorous outfits, vibrant fabrics and extravagant seduction.

Dressed Up for Summer 2015 demonstrates that the fashion industry is not all glitz and glamour, with the launch of new star-designer J.W Anderson’s first collection and the chaotic agenda of Vogue Editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.

Dressed up for Summer is showcased at ACMI as part of the VAMFF Cultural Program. Screenings run until Sunday 8 March 2015. For more information click here.

Image source: ACMI

On Sunday evening a bustling crowd of Melbourne’s trendiest northsiders gathered at the Regal Ballroom in Northcote, ready to endure a visual spectacle of glitter, glam and sensual pelvic thrusts.

Perfect Runway was anything but perfect. The production encouraged spectators to disregard conventions of perfection, and instead celebrate imperfection as perfection. Throughout the night there was a strong emphasis on unity and equality, both amongst humanity and within ourselves, in an attempt to shift humanities preoccupation with perfection.

If you were after a typical runway show you would have come to the wrong place. In it’s third year running, Perfect Runway boasts designs from emerging independent Melbourne based fashion labels – the new kids on the block with cosmic style and radical designs.

Runway 1 was a showcase of eccentric, bold, and sensational, ethically produced designs. Featuring local design labels such as Penny Drop, Gun Shy, Lexis and Ocram Si, Cut Throat on the Street, and Fizzy Fingers, Runway 1 blurred the lines of terrific and terrified, chic and kitsch, grunge and glamorous.

The local designers, motivated by ethical fashion, created their collections through humane, sustainable and environmentally conscious practices. Each collection was novel in design, material and presentation. Every garment came to life with a unique and experimental runway performance – illustrating the diversity of performers, artists and their garments.

Emerging Melbourne designer Sophie Cogs kicked off the show with her label GOO LiFE. The streetwear collection was an exotic array of silky fabrics, bold colours and psychedelic prints illustrated by Sebastian Berto. The collection was visually and functionally versatile – boasting reversible jackets , unisex designs, and a mix and match approach.

MC’s Zackari Watt and Kira Puru kept the audience on their feet with witty banter and seemingly spontaneous ballad outbreaks between each theatrical runway performance.
Runway 2 deviated away from local underground streetwear collections and focused on the talents of emerging designers in a showcase of extravagant wearable art. The experimental and innovative designs pushed the boundaries of conventional art and fashion culture.

Runway 2 featured designs from Rose Chong’s Costumiers, LunaSea Creations, Gemma Falconer, and The Alkira Centre. Their concepts were rich in meaning and in material, each design embraced wholesome creativity. Part two of Perfect Runway was just as frivolous and quirky as the first half of the night, from an Elizabethan style costume supposedly created from the menstrual blood of 30 women world wide, to an enchanting and kooky high couture costume created solely from a decades worth of trinkets and scraps of material found on the LunSea studio floor.

A “Miss Perfect” beauty pageant bound together this second half of the night. Presented between the collections of wearable art, “Miss Perfect” was an outlandish comedic mockery of beauty pageants. The extravagant performance ridiculed all aspects of the classic beauty pageant – the judges, the contestants and the talent acts. To tie up the night, quirky pageant hosts Sha Gaze and Gemma Falconer announced the winner of the pageant – everybody. A simple yet satisfactory ending that celebrates and embraces individual glory and imperfections.

Perfect Runway was presented as part of the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival Cultural Program’s Project Series 2015.

Known for his documentaries exploring the past and present in all things fashion, Prigent continues his investigation of historic fashion moments, trends and mishaps. Counting down the most influential and nostalgic fashion statements, designers and models, Prigent carefully unravels the decade that reformed and reinvented the fashion scene. From unkempt grunge and heroin chic, to the return of minimalism, the film asserts that the 1990s had no limits.

Fashion in the 1990’s is a chaotic mash up of interviews and archival footage. The frenzied alignment of runway shows, interviews, and offstage footage, imitates the rapid and cutthroat nature of the fashion industry. The film’s grainy 90s material is also uniquely charming and leads the audience through a path of nostalgia.

Loïc seamlessly combines this archival footage with current perspectives from industry insiders with interviews from designer Jean Paul Gaultier, Oliver Zahm from Purple Fashion Magazine, and Style.com’s Editor-at-Large Tim Blanks.

In this 52-minute snapshot of the 1990s, Prigent pays tribute to a decade that was simultaneously fearless and fearful. From Karl Lagerfeld to Alexander McQueen, the 90s saw the emergence of new designers, larger-than-life catwalk events, kitsch trends, and comeback of styles from previous decades.

Fashion in the 1990’s is showcased at ACMI as part of the VAMFF Cultural Program. Screenings run until Sunday 8 March 2015. For more information click here.

Showcased across three rooms at the Flying Goolie Gallery in Collingwood, FIGURE BY 3 utilises the industrial nature of the gallery space to empower each exhibited work of art. The Victorian terrace in which the gallery is located has a character of its own, emphasising a presence of form and texture beyond the exhibits displayed.

Molly Younger, ‘Coat on Two-sided Bas Relief’

FIGURE BY 3 eloquently captures the interaction between the disciplines of fashion, sculpture and photography. The exhibition explores the reproduction of the human figure, making use of an array of materials including latex, metal, fabric, plaster and paper.

Each artwork is seamlessly connected together through reference to material, form and texture. The dynamic inclusion of blue latex streams throughout the collection – it rolls from one room to another – creating a visual flow of consciousness between all works of art and, in turn, each discipline.

Annie Younger’s metal sculptures, Rhinoman 1 and Rhinoman 2, guards the threshold of the gallery. These two enormous metal statures stalk the room and invite you to observe every crease and mark crafted into the material.

Jack Younger, ‘Figure Series’

Meanwhile, the photographs comprised in Jack Younger’s Figure Series explore the physicality of photography, whilst also capturing the complexity of material and texture present in Molly Younger’s designs. He explores angles of the human body through various camera angles, juxtaposing the raw and ridged character of latex and the dainty human model.

In a similar fashion to Molly Younger’s 2013 graduate collection Form/Worn, her Garments on Plaster Figures Series included in FIGURE BY 3 presents the visual ambiguities of the human figure. Whether you are familiar with her craftsmanship or not, seeing the latex designs draped over plaster moulds exemplifies the human figure through the texture of each layer and fold.

Molly Younger, Garments on Plaster Figures Series

Annie, Jack and Molly exhibit a wholesome collection of works which illustrate the unspoken relationship binding all facets of the art world. It is the subtleties of artistry encapsulated within each garment, photograph and sculpture that reveals a story of construction – from beginning to end.  In particular, Molly’s designs are intricate and alluring, and can only truly be appreciated in the flesh.

Overall, FIGURE BY 3 explores three different and unique figurative formations of the human body by three artists whose work is bound together by matter, material and mind. The exhibition challenges the value of the human figure and its structural purpose.

FIGURE BY 3 shows at the Flying Goolie Gallery in Collingwood until March 15.

For more information on the exhibition click here.