Artists are teaming up with designers for the Johannesburg Art Gallery’s Spring Fashion Show. HAZEL FRIEDMAN takes a peek behind the seams
THE Friends of the Johannesburg Art Gallery can’t be accused of timidity. In fact, in their efforts to turn art into entertainment, they sometimes walk recklessly where purists fear to tread.
A few years ago, they organised a ball in honour of then-mayor Eddie Magid, inviting an interdisciplinary crew of artists and craftists to design the tablewear. But plates decorated with erect penises and suppurating sores proved too much for the palates of the mayor and Sotheby’s Stephan Welz, who was going to auction the work, and the event fell apart at the seams.
This year, the Friends have opted for a potentially less hazardous Spring Fashion Show. Curated by Lucia Burger and co-ordinated by Lucilla Booyzen, it will showcase the combined talents of local couturiers and culturalists. Each designer-artist team has been commissioned to create five garments for a fashion extravaganza on October 11 at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. The pieces (to be worn by professional models) will be auctioned at the end of the evening.
“We wanted to to raise funds for the gallery by organising a lighthearted, fun occasion,” says Burger, who recruited designers including Marianne Fassler, Chris Levin and Blue Zoo on to the designer team, with the likes of Robert Hodgins, Diane Victor, Helen Sebidi and Sam Nhlengethwa on the art side.
The unions have a serendipitous mix-and- match (“please God let it”) ring to them. For example, lycra luminaries Shanie Boestra and Jeremy Argue, aka Blue Zoo, have teamed up with the earthy talents of Sebidi. And Chris Levin has donated two classically designed shirts to rather unlikely recipients. The first will be trampled on — literally — by artist Bongi Dhlomo in a remake of a previous work entitled From All Walks of Life. This time, however, she won’t use the cow dung that served as an integral feature of the original.
Levin’s second shirt was offered to Diane Victor, who has since performed her trademark rites of desecration on it. And, let’s face it, what’s to stop a label junkie from wearing a Levin original adorned with images of men and women engaged in various oral and anal indulgences?
Whether the extravaganza will be a money-spinner remains to be seen. The process has not been entirely without angst. The planned merger between Norman Catherine and Blue Zoo didn’t bear fruit because the former had to dash off to England for Africa ’95. Then Sebidi stepped in, adding new meaning to the proverb “a stitch in time”.
But a peek behind the seams has revealed that within each couturier is an artist waiting to emerge — and that the spirit of the ramp resides within each artist. Despite the fact that they conform to the dictates of very different imperatives — designers feed off the fickle, public world of fashion, while fine artists delve into private, reflective realms — an alchemy of sorts seems to be taking place.
For example, designers Rachel Brown and Merrill Paigis, who own the trendy West African boutique Oba Badia in the Carlton Centre, are clearly making fashion magic with 1994 Standard Bank Young Artist award-winner Nhlengethwa. Drawing on a blend of Third and First World influences, Brown and Paigis have made white damask tunics on to which Nhlengethwa’s gritty urban imagery is printed.
“This has been a wonderful collaboration,” says Brown. “What unites us is not only our interest in beauty and simplicity but our desire to create a new African aesthetic based on a multitude of inspirations.”
Designer Julian and ex-art teacher Andre Naude have eschewed the idea of making a simple fashion statement in favour of creating a mobile objet d’art. “The garments we’ve designed are lace-up bustiers with billowing, cloudy ballgowns which Andre is in the process of painting,” explains Julian. “They actually function less as garments than as dress paintings. It’s like wearing a work of art.”
As for master of the macabre Hodgins, he has no doubt finally met his match in Fassler — the lady- of the-leggings who transformed a studio into a theme-park and a leopard-skin motif into her own personal trademark.
“I think Marianne was expecting me to come up with something really grotesque,” says Hodgins, “but the truth is, I adore glamour. Not a la Jean Harlow, mind, but in the Greta Garbo mould. I absolutely fell in love with those layers of fabric and the tulle, in particular, made me drool.”
Adds Fassler: “Robert and I decided to concentrate on one dress and infuse it both with the sensual and sinister elements that are present in his work. Also, he paints in layers of glaze, which approximates the tulle, in between which we’ve included motifs like dog’s eyes, feathers, leopard skin and strong colors over dark, ominous hues …”
They might not have been made in the malls of heaven, but who knows what creative offspring might yet emerge from these unions? It is, after all, the mating season.
The Johannesburg Art Gallery’s Spring Fashion Show takes place on October 11 at 8pm. Tickets are R150 per person and R135 for Friends. Phone 720-3479 to book