Clothing Series
In Western culture, clothing and immediate surroundings are often used to project a sense of self identity. Codes of dress operate as technical devices; clothes construct personal habitus. Clothing the body enables us to become sign, message and signifier. This series of work references ideas of memory, preservation, family & the construction of female identity, all through a series of large scale drawings.
Old clothes - empty, haunted clothes, clothes without a body - possess identities waiting to be both born and reborn. In every piece of clothing there is a sense of a life lived before, and of memories that can be brought back to life: memories of children long grown up, and of loved ones now gone. A fragment of cloth can act as an archive, stimulating the senses to reawaken memory.
The Clothing Series references museum display cases where objects & archives exhibit, preserve and store. 'Mis-Pers' plays upon associations with clothing laid out for identification, as in the case of missing persons. 'Flaneuse' is concerned with female space and identity. This specific piece of work owes its title to the metaphoric male figure brought into being by the 19th century poet and writer, Charles Baudelaire. 'Flaneuse' is a nonsense word; there is no feminine equivalent of the term 'Flaneur'.
Baby clothing affects us in particular ways. Emotive by its tiny scale & attention to detail, we recognise the vulnerability of the infant waiting to be placed within these garments. We debate the notions of sentimentality, innocence and nostalgia. With small babies, we are encouraged to accquire superflous clothing that is worn once or not at all, yet with the passing of time, we allocate those same objects a place and significance in our lives. We save them as exhibits. Though rarely used and often impractical. our preservation of them becomes a significant and essential part of our re-interpretation of the past.
Clothing suggests form, and where there is none, we are drawn to speculate on what might have been, or what once was. In her Clothing Series, Denise explores issues of memory, loss and re-interpretation.
