Sunday, July 25, 2010

And Now For Something Diffferent

Studio briefs, up until this semester, have been fairly structured and coherent...creative freedom limitless, but on reflection, highly absorbed by traditional media conventions that influence fashion. We have accepted WGSN as our bible, and have delved into the history of styles and sillhouettes to regurgitate class-old pieces of inspiration.
It could be considered that, up until now, we have not really excercised our full potential of creative realms.
So when initially briefed about the project and change of direction for this half-year of studio, there were of course mixed feelings of apprehension, excitement and anxieties. These feelings aside and after deeper reflection, I have decided that the project for this semester entails a reason and priviledge to exploit the cultural spectors hiding in Brisbane.

For Us By Us is a collaborative project between the second year BFA Fashion students at QUT and 6 locally practicing artists. It is a fused concept brought together by media/arts enterprise RaRaCurio and local arts initiative Vegas Spray.
The purpose for the collaboration was to challenge the traditional ideas about funcion, aesthetic and context in both art and fashion. It is about merging the influences of art into the practice of fashion, to boost fashion's creative and innovative credibility and art's commercial viability. This dialectual fusion will push students and artists to find the median between the co-existing practices, and has the potential to really place Brisbane on the cultural map if it explodes into community with success. The process will be documented and the end outcome of the collaboration will be showcased in film and exhibition format.

I personally feel as though this project is bigger than Ben Hur, and finally something tangible for Brisbane's perceived lack of cultural substenance. I was talking to a Brisbane ex-pat in Melbourne recently, who claimed that (in terms of cultural potential) "Sydney (was) the mistress who you could get good use out of every now and then, but Melbourne (was) the wife you just wanted to stay with. Brisbane (was) the gangly, awkward tween in the middle." I don't agree with this statement, but I also don't totally dis-agree. True, Brisbane is a young and developing town...but we have the creative talent, we have the resources. Up until now it has just been very hard to find an avenue to bring it all together and make something happen. So I am considering this project not only as something for me to exploit in terms of the people and resources I have access to, but also I endow it to my pursuits and will to justify what this town has to offer.

Let the collaboration begin.

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