P.H.A.T&friends

P.H.A.T&friends premieres the film PHATpink(buffet) in an all encompassing fashion and food event.

This will be the first of a series of interactive nights where fashion can be experienced intimately (touched, worn, eaten) rather than bought/sold.

P.H.A.T& friends aims towards new curatorial models for the exhibition of garments that do not exist within the accepted fashion system of commercial businesses.

By blurring the lines between art / design and exhibiting garments on real, fleshy bodies,without the hyped spectacle of the catwalk, fashion is finally semi-able to regain its integrity as an art-form.

Or is it(?), I wonder as I watch them all literally devour the delicacies on offer.

after all, the work is still made to be consumed..

ubiquitous mastication

 The Pound of Flesh draws a connection between fashion, consumption and meat: 'a species which is lower in the food chain, but also domesticated and raised for human consumption'*.

I am submerged in an industry flushed daily with a bombardment of mashed culture, imitation, pastiche, thieving: fashion exists as a constantly dissatisfied feeding cycle, the ouroboros. Alike our bodies, it becomes what it eats. Contemporary fashion engulfs itself as what was old is made new; reworked, re-contextualised. Everything created is ultimately destroyed.

Fed by gluttony, this unquenchable hunger we are all caught up in means the very idea of humanity and its race for the newest and the trendiest is inextricably tied up with the process of self consumption.

"through the mouth enters the world to be swallowed up" (Bakhtin, Rabelias & His World)

i eat myself,

and succulently marvel at the plastic joys of hubba bubba and its ability to produce a sea of saliva.

food = body

Food builds the body.

So, extending upon the previous post, if i was to reference the stripped back, purest body, food would play a huge part.

what is food? isn't it just a bunch of ingredients?

what are ingredients- where do they come from?

the earth.

what makes the earth? decayed life, human bodies.

 what constructs the body?

food. and restraint.

"... food's unique ability to 'become' the body that consumes it... it only fully becomes itself (as food opposed to garbage) if it is eaten."

Waskul, D; Vannini, P; 2006; Body/Embodiment: symbolic interaction and the sociology of the body; Ashgate Publishing. p 204-5

Edibles.

I find myself constantly searching for the beginning of things. Back tracking to where it all began, getting away from unnecessary design lines and busy decorative patterns. But when stripping back design, to show the ease of purity, there is nothing left. when peeling away layers of a chunky dysfunctional garment when does one stop, before reaching the skin?

What is the purest form of garment, the classic?

If all structure, balance lines, sleeves and armholes reflect the contour of our body, then the starting point must be... the body.

the body is the purest form of garment. everything else is copied from its reference points.

What builds the body?

The Chew Process

It's been a while, (over a year)- sorry blog!

Let me update you on what I have been doing.

These images are 'Glamour Shots' produced for a work in late 2007 entitled 'The Chew Process'. The work is an analysis of the process of creation through a system of restraints -mental, social, emotional and physical. The images produced were a series of glamor shots projecting the narcissism inherently associated with the creation of art (seen as a selfish endeavor purely quenching the thirst of the artist) and the heinous fashion industry...

Garments were built by the body, and in turn, built the body by causing a constant state of restraint on muscles.

This project heralds the start of my pink obsession...