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Wearables 1981 - 1982

A Wearable was either worn or exhibited hanging on the wall alongside a black and white photograph of the object being worn. These images were taken for me by David Ward for this purpose and became integral to the exhibited work. The combination of object and photograph originally arose out of a desire to give the viewer a personal experience in a public situation where the piece could not be touched. You could look at the object on the wall and look at the photograph [either exhibited or in the catalogue] and have the idea of wearing it without actually wearing it.

The black and white photographs brought out inherent characteristics of imaginary cinematic glamour to create a series of portraits.

Extracts from a Letter to a Museum Collector - January 2008

The medium for my work is time-based, the experience is intimate and personal, the physical form is spatial, the experience is surprising, the aim is to invoke some realisation of the moment through an awareness of physical presence. Following this logically, if the Wearable is to be seen as an object in a museum it requires documentary evidence to imagine the action of wearing it.

The problem is similar for any utilitarian object shown in a museum or documented in a book. Lets take the example of a cup. It has the advantage over my Wearable in that it has a familiar and recognisable form so one has prior knowledge which enables us to recognise it, The cup is designed to hold liquid and so cannot be useful upside down although because of its familiar form we would still recognise it as a cup whichever way up it is, it has a handle which accommodates the hand and the weight of the liquid it is designed to carry must also be taken into consideration, it has a lip, a base to fit into a saucer- and so on- all these things are recognisable. What about clothing- a sari for instance is simply a length of cloth – without the knowledge that it is a sari or how a sari is worn , the length of fabric gives little away apart from the fact that it is a complete and specific length of fabric that has not been cut. - but again we are already informed so we know about saris and can interpret them, nevertheless if you use the fabric of the sari and turn it into something else for example you could wind it into a turban or cut it into a dress then it is no longer a sari but has been transformed. But due to the familiarity of a sari you might be able to exhibit it to show the quality of the fabric- how it falls, folds and tucks, the depth and design of the border. Or what about Schiaparelli’s Shoe Hat? No point in exhibiting it as though it were a shoe, it must be seen ‘upside down’ as a hat and a photograph or other device is usually used to show this to enable the object to be understood. You can see where this is going. My Wearable is not a recognisable object: like Schiaparelli’s hat it needs documentation before you can imagine wearing it- the artists intention is otherwise unclear – if it is exhibited upside down then you will be confused and the voice of the object is lost.

When I made the Wearables, I addressed this documentary problem not as an afterthought but in parallel to the object. Like the cup the object has a sense of gravity and is three dimensional, like the sari there is no human body to give it recognisable form and load-bearing structure, like Schiaparelli’s Shoe Hat there is a right way up. I rejected the idea of a mannequin because the introduction of a ‘body’ that is not your own removes you from the intimacy of the experience and creates an inappropriate diversion: I wanted the Wearable to be seen as an autonomous object with a subject. It is that intimacy and direct experience that I hoped to enable for the viewer in the Museum. David Ward and I made photographs of the Wearables to accompany the work when it was exhibited and they are an integral documentary adjunct to the work.

Nearly 30 years later the autonomous nature of the Wearable continues to create an anomaly for the curator of utilitarian objects.

© Susanna Heron 2008