Within my practice, I have explored fashion as an art form. There is a controversial argument surrounding whether or not fashion can be identified as an art form or not. This is predominantly because fashion is designed with an intended function.
I wanted to address this argument, create something that is a fashion heavy piece of work and place it within an artistic setting to see if it could exist as an art piece. I created an interactive walk – through art piece in an attempt to merge the two worlds into one piece.
The front of the piece presents itself like a high end shop front, similar to those in Mayfair and Bond Street. Once stepping through the space the audience is greeted with a display of garments, made from everyday materials, packaging materials, children’s toys, cigarette filters and expanding foam. All these materials have an intended purpose in everyday life, already functional states of existence. But in this environment I have removed their intended uses and instead used them to create one – off garments without the primary intention of being worn.
Fashion is described as its only use and reasoning being for function – wearable objects as a requirement to everyday life, however there are fashion designers who do not consider themselves fashion designers, instead artists who create sculptural garments/ art pieces with no intention to be worn on the body – created for the aesthetic purpose only.
In this instance this is what I wanted to do with my work in an attempt to blur the lines between the art world and the fashion world.
Sarah E. Jones | Fine Art
