Text Francesca Gavin

Paradigm Shift is one of best exhibitions realised at 180 The Strand, a space known for its maze-like exhibitions with a heavy focus on video, digital interface and experimentation. Curated by Dazed, AnOther and Nowness founder Jefferson Hack, with Twin’s Susanna Davies-Crook as Associate Curator, the exhibition looks at how style, subculture and identity have been formed and realised by the screen. It is a fascinating video show that brings together incredible artists including Mark Leckey, Nan Goldin, Derek Jarman, Andy Warhol and Arthur Jafa, as well as fashion designers like Tremaine Emory and Telfar. Spend time and watch it all – this is a real education.

Can you tell me the premised of the exhibition?

Jefferson Hack: It is about how artists use moving image to stage and style identity, often through the lens of fashion. Fashion is a core part of how we manifest our identity. When you’re looking at moving image works, that’s stage and style identity. A core part of that is how clothing of all kinds – whether that’s work, wear, uniform, cosplay, subcultural dress – how that informs the story. It’s also about media hijacking and the mediation of performance, and dress and subculture through the screen.  I think in a world of constant mediation, fashion plays a really important role in signalling our identity. Whether we’re dressing down, dressing up, disguising, hiding, amplifying. This show is really about how artists, through moving image, stage and perform identity and use fashion and style as central to their narrative. How technologies have accelerated this idea that everyone can be a broadcaster. Everyone can be a performer; everyone can be a commentator; everyone can be an artist. That’s really the new paradigm shift.

What do you find interesting about the crossover between fashion and moving image?

JH: Telfar is a kind of fashion brand, but who subvert the idea of fashion as a commodity. Who is dialled right into New York subculture, coming being born out of New York nightlife. What’s interesting about Demna is he looks at the street, but he’s looking through the screen. I think you sort of switched the street gaze is now being replaced by the screen gaze. 

In a wider sense, what do you think appeals to people from a fashion showing in an art context?

JH: Martine Rose, Grace Wales Bonner, Tremaine Emory are natural storytellers. They’re designers that make clothing where the clothing carries a message, and the clothing is almost like a vehicle for storytelling. They’re mining interesting archives, personal history. Looking at sort of wider socio-political issues that are coming through in the way that they design and present their work. I think that in a fashion context, a lot of that gets lost. Fashion at its most basic is about selling clothes. You’re selling it through a combination of image and story. But it’s much more commodified and faster. An art context allows it to slow down, allows the narrative to come to the fore, allows the engagement with the audience to be deeper, because people are there to question, understand, listen, receive. 

Paradigm Shift is on at 180 Studios until Saturday 21 December

https://www.180studios.com/paradigm-shift