We’ve had Christopher Bailey’s exhibition in Burberry’s pop-up at Makers House recently immersing us—and his latest collection—in the art of Henry Moore. Then last summer there was Duro Olowou’s memorable show revolving around art, textiles and much more at the Camden Arts Centre.
The latest fashion designer to turn curator is JW Anderson, whose Disobedient Bodies opened at the Hepworth Wakefield on Saturday 18 March. The show consists of a wonderfully idiosyncratic selection from the museum’s modern British holdings, some eclectic outside loans, and Anderson’s own extensive collections of art, fashion and design.
The show takes as its starting point the outrageously radical reinterpretations of the human form in the early works of Moore and Hepworth. “I was struck by how rebellious they were, and how shocking it must have been,” Anderson says. He has put gender subversion at the centre of his work and personally owns pieces by Ben Nicholson and Keith Vaughan. “In my own work, I try and look at how ugliness could be new, and how to work through that.”
Certainly there are many unexpected conversations as well as some surprising connections in the bodily investigations running through this most gregarious of exhibitions. It has been deliberately devised by Anderson (in association with the firm 6a architects) to conjure up the feel of a social gathering. Anderson’s vividly androgynous knits hold hands across from Sarah Lucas’s languid looping bunnies, the thrust of a Dior dress echoes the bump of a Jean Arp marble, and a Comme des Garçons Monster cardigan ties itself in knots before a particularly kinky Hans Bellmer doll.
It’s not just the art world that has been invited to this party. Exhibition education projects are usually tokenistic bolt-ons—annoyingly intrusive art trollies or art trails that no children (or at least not mine) ever want to fill in. But here kids from local schools were invited to dress up in in some of the most precious pieces of couture. Pictures of the little darlings resplendent in vintage Comme, Issey Miyake, Elisabeth de Senneville were taken by leading fashion photographer Jamie Hawkesworth and form an intrinsic part of the show. They even had their own private view.
Throughout and where possible, in homage to Hepworth’s desire that visitors experience her sculpture with their hands as well as their eyes, visitors of all ages are encouraged to physically engage with many of the exhibits. We are invited to sit on the classic chairs by Eileen Gray, Gerrit Rietveld and Gaetano Pesce and to get up close and personal with a forest of giant dangling JW Anderson jumpers. All in all, this is a generously inclusive boundary-busting gathering that will be a pleasure for everyone to attend.