Dress Codes was the third ICP Triennial of photography and video, which takes the form of a global survey of the best of contemporary photography and video art. Dress Codes focused on ‘image makers who critically examine fashion’s relationship to the wider social world.’ The artists featured, approach fashion as ‘a form of social communication… they use costume, clothing and disguise to create a rich visual language; one filled with references to history, culture, gender and geography’. The work is described as exploring questions of how individuality is expressed within a globalised era, asking, ‘how do we construct the selves that we show to the rest of the world’, it looked at how ‘costume’ can be used to define a community, create a fantasy or convey as sense of power.
Needless to say this was spot on for me, as my silence project was exploring themes of self presentation and changeable realities. I enjoyed seeing Laurie Simmons constructions of reality where she ‘plays with scale, juxtaposition, light and perspective’ to create fantasy scenes. ‘Simmons reminds us that nostalgia for a better time is often a paper thin gloss on reality’. Her work uses cut outs and items from dolls houses, in a strikingly realistic way.
Cindy Sherman’s fashion images that appeared in Paris Vogue, show her modeling designer clothes, disguised as various characters from the world of fashion. This idea of disguise and re- representation really fascinates me. In one of the pieces she appears four times as a women raising plastic glasses at a party, with only minor differences between the women it comments on ‘the heard mentality that ironically pervades an industry celebrating individuality and personal style.’
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