Exhibiting Fashion: Recovering Exhibitions

To celebrate the work of Centre for Fashion Curation (CfFC), we are hosting a symposium, followed by drinks. Participants will share their diverse practices, ideas and reflections on exhibiting fashion, past, present and future. They will explore how fashion exhibitions are captured and documented. Dr Gabriele Monti and Karen van Godtsenhoven will bring perspectives on recovering exhibitions and shaping new futures in the practice of fashion curation and exhibition-making.

M01 lecture theatre

1.30-1.50pm

Welcome (20 mins) intro to the CfFC’s programme of events across the year and reviewing a decade of CfFC.

1.50-2.50pm

Part 1: Gabriele Monti

Dr Gabriele Monti, IUAV University of Venice, will share his research on fashion curating and cultural policy in Italy and using CfFC’s Exhibiting Fashion online archive. Followed by Q&A.

Break 10 mins

3.00-4.15pm

Part 2: CfFC members present 15-minute talks about their work reclaiming histories of exhibitions, objects, narratives, and reflect upon their professional journeys, followed by Q&A.

• Professor Amy de la Haye - will experiment by talking to the objects that variously link her work to the earth.

• Dr Caroline Stevenson – will provide a series of reflections on friendship and solidarity and explore how we might discuss these in the context of our curatorial work.

• Louise Chapman – will explore the interplay between the fictive, real and imaginary in The Adventures of a Pink Silk Dress; written by Itself (Chapman 2021, unpublished), which forms part of her practice-based PhD.

• Dr Leila Nassereldein - ‘The Living Room is a Box in the Theatre of the World’ will analyse Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism through the method of the constellation, as realised in her installation Nana’s House (London College of Fashion, 2023-24).

• Professor Claire Wilcox – will reflect upon how displaying the windows of her parents' shop Claire Fashions comprised her first foray as a fashion curator.

4.15-5.15pm

Part 3: Freelance curator Karen van Godtsenhoven in conversation with Professor Judith Clark

• A discussion that will explore establishing spaces to develop fashion narratives and Karen’s exhibition ideas and plans for a major London gallery, followed by Q&A.

5.15-5.20pm

Round up with Judith Clark and Amy de la Haye

Room 117

6.00pm-7.30pm

NJ Stevenson – Fashion curator NJ Stevenson will provide insights into the collaborative creation of the exhibition Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London, recently opened at the Fashion Textile Museum.

Drinks

Image: 'Fashion: an anthology by Cecil Beaton’, displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London from October 1971 to January 1972. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Host or Publisher London College of Fashion, UAL