It is not rare to see unauthorised films or series about fashion designers often getting criticized by the families and relatives of the particular designer portrayed.
This happened with Ryan Murphy’s "The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story", with Ridley Scott's much-anticipated "The House of Gucci", starring Lady Gaga as Maurizio Gucci's black widow, Patrizia Reggiani, and more recently with the Netflix series "Halston", written and directed by Daniel Minahan and with Ryan Murphy as executive producer and co-writer.
Released in May this year, the series follows the rise and fall of Roy Halston (Ewan McGregor), from milliner who won notoriety when Jackie O who wore one of his pillbox hats, to fashion designer, but it is also a glamorous story of fashion, licences, perfumes, sex, drugs and money.
Halston's family wasn't consulted and, after the series came out, Lesley Frowick, Halston's niece and chief executive of his archives, released a statement complaining that the series was "an inaccurate, fictionalised account" of her uncle's life.
Halston's glamorous career, his excesses at Studio 54, but also his friends like the talented Elsa Peretti (Rebecca Dayan), who became Tiffany's most iconic jewellery designer, remain fascinating in this series, but there is a fault in it as the five epioseds do not allow us to grasp the essence of his designs nor to understand where the genius of this designer who represented American glamour in the late 1960s and '70s really lay.
Or rather we get a glimpse of it, like the intuition about the suedette shirt dress in the early '70s that became a must, a functional dress that women were able to put in the washing machine, but we don't see the arty patterns behind his iconic designs, or some quick yet striking solutions to build iconic accessories.
Maybe that’s due to the shortness of the series or maybe they were going through time limits, pressures and money issues, but the creative aspect gets sacrificed in favour of drama. Quick trips to some museum archives and collections may have lent wonderful inspirations instead and may have opened the minds of the viewers to more insights in Halston's creativity.
A quick example: the Costume Institute at the Met Museum in New York, preserves a mask made by Halston and donned by the American publisher Katharine Graham as a guest of honor to Truman Capote’s 1966 Black and White Masquerade Ball.
The mask perfectly matched the Balmain dress Graham chose for this occasion, replicating its ivory shade and its decorative motif with black beading and gems.
The real trick? Well, we usually think about a mask as something that covers entirely the wearer's face or eyes and that is usually secured with an elastic or fastened around the back of the head. Halston built the mask instead over an eyeglass frame (without the lenses; as you can see from the image posted on the Instragram page of The Met's Costume Institute).
In this way the mask wouldn't have ruined the wearer's hairstyle and may have been removed quickly and easily without needing any help. Now that’s a simple solution, but its often the simplest tricks that create the best and most iconic timeless designs.
In Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there are quite a few artists and street performers, some of them reunited in the collective Ndaku Ya La Vie Est Belle, employing the most disparate materials to create very unique costumes that they use for performances in the streets of the city.
Photographs of these costumes from a distance call to mind Nick Cave's soundsuits, they are powerful and visual incarnations of bizarre dreams and nightmares, complex and multi-layered, at times calling to mind the attires of African ceremonial rites. Some of these costumes also make you think about folk traditions hinting at transformations and regenerations, like the Scottish Burry Man in South Queensferry.
Yet look closer at these costumes and you will realise that they tell very different stories: these artists use indeed waste materials to highlight environmental issues, but some of the elements used for their costumes are also a way to comment about social and political problems.
While until a few years ago seeing such a costume may have prompted us to think about illnesses in general, now the attire has assumed a new power, hinting at vaccines and also reminding us that, while in some countries we are talking about giving people a third dose of vaccine against Coronavirus, poorer countries are being left behind with millions of people who still haven't received not even one dose.
Mbuyi Tickson's costume made instead with condoms looks at access to condoms in Africa and the existing gap between availability and need.
The assorted limbs of plastic dolls forming the intricate costume donned by Shaka Fumu Kabaka are instead not a reference to childhood, but to the victims of the Six-Day War (June 2000), a series of armed confrontations between Ugandan and Rwandan forces around the city of Kisangani, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The precursor of this trend for costumes made with recycled materials, is Eddy Ekete who first created a costume made with drink cans in the early 2010s to highlight the problem of garbage accumulating in the city.
More artists followed his example: Kilomboshi Lukumbi Hénock, also known as Pape Noire, lives in an area of the city heavily polluted by solvents, factory fumes, and diesel from generators, and who focuses on denouncing environmental damage with his costumes made with plastic car parts; Sarah Ndele who made a costume covered with a vast array of plastic cups, pots and bottles and Falone Mambu, whose electric cable wire costume hints at daily power cuts.
The list of artists and performers creating these costumes is therefore long, and also includes Patrick Kitete's mirror sapeur costume, inviting the Congolese to pick up the pieces of their identity shattered by the West and stand proud, and Junior Longalonga who creates characters rather than just costumes, like his Robot Covid-19. This character wears a costume covered in chicken feathers and urges the population to respect social barriers, while his costume made with the inner tubes of tires is a tribute to the Congolese who suffered in the rubber farms for twenty-three years (1885-1908) when the Congo was the personal possession of Leopold II, King of Belgium.
Many of these artists will take part in Kinshasa's streets for KinAct festival, but let's hope that, at some point, these wearable sculptures will travel around the world. Their rag-and-bone man aesthetic combined with urban craftsmanship and performance art maybe not be filed under fashion or Haute Couture, but these costumes are characterised by a strong visual and audio-tactile power through which the wearer tackles different issues and builds very personal narratives, reminding us of the damages caused by rich countries on Africa, but also highlighting the creativity, vitality and energy of African artists.
Sometimes you leaf through an art book and you spot an artist whose work would translate pretty well into fashion, and you naturally wonder why, with all the fashion collections inspired by art, that particular artist hasn't been rediscovered by this or that designer. This is definitely the case with Italian artist Piero Dorazio (1927-2005).
Inspired by Giacomo Balla, Dorazio created paintings formed by minimalist coloured lines or by intricate grids and intersecting sinuous waves. His compositions often featured mesmerising chromatic and illusory effects and the more you look at some of his works, the more you wonder if it would be possible to use some of his colourful abstractions for interior design or fashion textiles and fabrics.
If you would like to learn more about Dorazio and get inspired by his works, you will be happy to hear that his paintings will be included in the Established Master section at the twenty-fifth edition of Miart, the international modern and contemporary art fair in Milan (from 17th to 19th September 2021). Entitled "Dismantling the silence" (taken from the eponymous collection of poems by Serbian-born American poet Charles Simić), this edition of the art fair will focus on creating juxtapositions between the past and the present, emerging artists and modern masters.
Image credit for this post
Piero Dorazio, Pilota 19, 1964, Oil on canvas, 25,5 x 35,5cm, Photo and Courtesy Galleria Tonelli, Milan / Porto Cervo
In yesterday's post we looked at ways to save money and materials in design and architecture. Another way to do so is using relatively small modular elements that, combined together, can create striking designs.
Interior designers (and Prada one-off collaborators) Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec created for example in 2009 "Clouds", an innovative, interlocking fabric tile concept in collaboration with Kvadrat, the renowned Danish company producing high-performance, design textiles and rugs, and acoustic and window covering solutions for both commercial and residential interiors.
The elements are sold in their flat configuration in boxes of 8 or 24 pieces (and they are available in 8 colour combinations), but by folding them and linking the various pieces one to the other with special fasteners, it is possible to create three-dimensional small, medium or large decorative screens or wall or ceiling installations.
The concept behind Clouds is simple - creating a basic shape conceived as an alternative to the classic square or rectangular tile - that can offer the possibility of coming up with more innovative and dynamic shapes and complex constructions. The tiles are also sustainable as they can be arranged and re-arranged, quickly and easily. The possibilities resulting from mixing and combining the pieces are endless.
Since its initial launch in 2009, Clouds has won several awards (including the Design of the Year 2010 award by the Design Museum London and the Danish Design Award 2010 by the Danish Design Center) and has also joined the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, proving that modularity is a timeless, fascinating and creative option in design.
In more recent years there have been some fashion designers who experimented with modular clothes, but the modular system at the base of Clouds could be implemented to create also accessories and maybe even jewellery that could be easily assembled and disassambled.
It is always extremely exciting to find analogies between fashion and architecture that can inspire us to create more innovative designs.
Take for example these vintage sandals from the Costume Institute collection at The Metropolitan Museum in New York. Designed by David Levin for Saks Fifth Avenue in 1938 (as The Historialist found out, helping the curators at the Costume Institute identifying them) they were the result of a patent submitted by Levin in October 1938 and granted a month later.
Not much is known about Levin, but he was active between the '30s and the '40s and submitted quite a few innovative designs for patents in his times.
For these sandals Levin opted for a wedge, a popular solution during World War II when, due to material shortages in Europe, designers aimed at eliminating the need for a steel shank to support the arch of the shoe. In this case, though, Levin came up with a very inventive solution for the wedge, forming a continuous, curving shape around the back of the heel (the same expedient was reused by United Nude in one of its first signature designs, the lightweight, open-wedge mid heel "Möbius" shoes View this photo).
The more you look at that heel that looks as if it were made by a long leather sole, sinuously folded onto itself, the more you think about something completely different and developed in our times, like the layers of concrete forming the supports for a recent project - the Striatus footbridge.
A project by the Block Research Group (BRG) at ETH Zurich and Zaha Hadid Architects Computation and Design Group (ZHACODE), in collaboration with incremental3D (in3D), and made possible by Holcim, Striatus is a 16x12-metre arched masonry footbridge composed of 3D-printed concrete blocks assembled without mortar or reinforcement.
3D concrete printing (3DCP), contemporary design, advanced computational design and robotic technologies are combined with traditional techniques of master builders in this footbridge to create an alternative to traditional concrete construction.
The bridge proposes a new language for concrete: the name "Striatus" reflects indeed its structural logic and fabrication process. In this project concrete is printed in layers orthogonal to the main structural forces to create a "striated" compression-only funicular structure that requires no reinforcement.
The shape is the result of limit analysis techniques and equilibrium methods, such as thrust network analysis, originally developed for the structural assessment of historic masonry vaults.
As the construction does not need mortar, its strength comes through geometry rather than from an inefficient accumulation of materials.
The bridge features indeed a reduced amount of materials and deep arches that transfer horizontal loads to the supports in pure compression.
Each block of the structure is made with 500 print layers per block extruded by a multi-degree of freedom (DoF) robot arm manipulator, and the blocks are as hollow and as light as possible, characterised by an infill triangulation that ensures proper support and that is made by a single, continuous print path meeting various criteria (appropriate print speed and turning radii; structurally required material width and thickness, and controlled expression of naturally occurring printing artefacts).
The bridge employs therefore the least amount of material possible while maintaining structural integrity under all loading conditions.
So where is the analogy? In the layered design or rather in the possibility of saving money and material to achieve structure by using a layered design that seems to fold onto itself and that helps achieving balance without producing a solid wedge in the case of the shoe or a block with a solid section in the case of the bridge (Striatus' new floor system uses only 30% of the volume of concrete and just 10% of the amount of steel).
Striatus is also sustainable: the blocks can be dismantled and the bridge disassembled and reassembled at different locations. If the construction is no longer needed, the materials can simply be separated, recycled and repurposed.
Introducing the principles demonstrated by Striatus would disrupt the construction industry, transforming the way we design and construct our built environment.
But could some of the principles behind Striatus be used to create innovative designs in fashion? Try and find the answer to this question by seeing the bridge in person, if you get the chance, it is indeed currently on display at the Giardini della Marinaressa in Venice for the Architecture Biennale (until 21st November 2021).
Image credits for this post
Images 3-14 Copyright and Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects
In yesterday's post we looked at a turban-wearing icon, so let's start a new week with a vintage turban by Schiaparelli that became very popular in the US in the '40s after an Army Captain, Sidney Williams, brought it back from Paris as a preset to his wife. In the States it was sold by Nan Duskin, of Philadelphia, an internationally known boutique that dressed the city's high society.
Being by Schiap, this turban had something peculiar about it: it was possible to wear it like a turban, tilted on the right and with the loose ends wrapped around the neck, creating a sort of scarf, or like Schiaparelli did in this black and white picture taken in 1944 by Cecil Beaton, who managed to hightlight the optical power of the striped white and pink fabric with his clever use of lights and shadows. In this case the turban, knotted on the top of the head with the two loose ends hanging down, looked a bit more like a scarf wrapped simply wrapped around the wearer's head. It may have been designed in the '40s, but Schiap's turban wouldn't look out of place on a beach in our times and in this sweltering hot summer.
It's the height of the summer season and some lucky ones among us may be on holiday while others may be at home, maybe self-isolating because of Covid-19. We all need some kind of distraction, though, so let's pick an icon for this Sunday - actor and samba singer Carmen Miranda - and ponder a bit about her looks.
The embodiment of the Tropicalia trend, Carmen Miranda is certainly an icon of style with her signature turbans decorated with feathers, ruffles of fabrics and fruit, colourful and sequinned gowns, oversized jewellery pieces and peep toe style platform heels inspired by Portuguese clogs.
Usually covered in sequins, rhinestones and stones, the shoes, originally commissioned by Miranda to an orthopaedic cobbler in Rio de Janeiro to make her look higher (she was just 5 ft tall), sparked a trend after the star started wearing them.
While she definitely created a colourful aesthetic that appealed to Hollywood in the '40s, her ensembles were also deemed controversial as they were inspired by the outfits of Afro-Brazilian female street vendors in colonial times and in particular by the lace tops, gold jewellery and cloth turbans of the Baianas (women from Bahia) and by the trays of fruit and produce that these women often carried on their heads. Miranda turned their clothes around, becoming her own designer, embellishing her gowns, shoes and turbans and transforming them into the main ingredients of a very glamorous fashion cocktail.
Miranda's turbans were indeed made with more glamorous fabrics such as lamé and the fruit was obviously not real (for more fake fruit watch her in Busby Berkeley's 1943 "The Gang's All Here" (1943), as she sings "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat" among chorus girls creating a choreography with giant bananas, an image that then inspired the logo for United Fruit Company's Chiquita Banana), so, in a way, her look was a sort of exercise in appropriation that became extremely appealing in the US with wealthy white ladies.
As she became popular, she ended up endorsing a variety of products including costume jewellery, turbans, and platform shoes sold in department stores (Bonwit Teller department store even had mannequins with faces and poses reproducing Miranda's), but also General Electric radios.
Portuguese-born Miranda (her family immigrated to Brazil in 1910 shortly after she was born and her real name was Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha) turned therefore into a fashion icon and an ambassador of samba and of Brazilian identity for the regime of Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas. Yet she was also considered as shocking and controversial for having appropriated the Baianas' looks and for playing the stereotypical role of the Latin charmer, often ending up becoming a caricature of her own self.
So if you want to channel the tropicalia look as channelled by this icon, do so, but first explore Carmen Miranda's story and remember that those extravagantly decorated turbans and frilly multi-coloured dresses hide quite a few questions about identity, native culture and appropriation.
In yesterday's post we looked at a comic book anti-hero shooting colourful, yet lethal, polka-dots through his gauntlets. Let's continue the thread today by looking at an artist who also shoots his bright and brilliant colours - albeit they aren't lethal - on walls and canvases, Rutger de Vries.
The Dutch multidisciplinary artists who trained as a graphic designer, may fall into the graffiti art category, but he defines his work as Post-Graffiti Art.
De Vries doesn't spray his colours on walls himself, but directs - as if he were an orchestra conductor - the flood of colours from fire extinguishers containing different, and often complementary, shades of paint. Released on a white background, the colours run freely down the canvases, bleeding and forming colourful bright and bold compositions, merging together in a puddle beneath.
But his works also invite people to ponder about the issue of authorship in art: De Vries employs some of the materials of street artists, but his artworks are made "mechanically" through the use of self-built painting machines (at times he lets the machines linked to a computer create his work thanks to a special software). So the machines work as artists under his direction and, in this way, De Vries investigates the scope of his own authorship.
Expect the fashion world to co-opt De Vries soon: his expansive painting installations could be created live during a runway show or could maybe be used for a fashion/textile performance in which extinguishers could be employed to decorate a dress to evoke Alexander McQueen's "No. 13" catwalk show (S/S 1999) with robotic arms spraying in black and yellow a white cotton muslin dress donned by Shalom Harlow.
Image credits for this post
Images 1 to 4: Copyright & Courtesy Rutger de Vries
Images 5: Shalom Harlow, Alexander McQueen, "No. 13" catwalk show (S/S 1999)
It is often the case that in films about heroes and superheroes, the underdogs and the most unassuming characters become our favourite ones. This is definitely the case with the recently released "The Suicide Squad" by James Gunn, a reboot/sequel of the disastrous 2016 film by David Ayer.
The plot is essentially the same, the government agency led by Amanda Waller recruits imprisoned supervillains for dangerous missions in exchange for reduced sentences.
In this case our anti-heroes travel to Corto Maltese (a tribute to Hugo Pratt) to destroy the Nazi-era prison and laboratory known as Jotunheim and the secret Project Starfish. Gunn's film offers the chance to a wide range of DC Comics heroes and villains to find a new life (and for some also a very fast death...).
Of all the bizarre characters appearing in Gunn's rebootquel, there are a few ones that will become favourites with many cosplayers around the world.
Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) returns in this film to a bi-coloured black and red look, but retains the acrobatic attacks and colourfully visionary assaults she developed in Cathy Yan's hugely underestimated "Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn".
Yan's magnificently colourful and dynamic film, hated by most male critics and male comics fans for featuring a bunch of dangerous, strong and clever girls and a protagonist that finally left behind her psychotic boyfriend and her itsy bitsy hot pants to pursue her own destiny, clearly inspired Gunn all the best ideas, from the fractured timeline of events to some of the most intriguing shades of the film.
Harley Quinn's blood red tulle gown that she rips and uses as a weapon, but also the Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior)'s attire complete with leather steampunk mask and luminous device to attract and direct mice, will definitely provide many ideas to cosplayers.
But there is a character in "The Suicide Squad" that manages to steal the fashion scene – Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian).
Traumatised by his mother, a scientist at S.T.A.R. Labs, who wanted to turn him and his brothers into superheroes, but only managed to infect him with an inter-dimensional virus that produces glowing bulging dot-like bumps under his skin, Abner Krill has now got to expel the colourful dots his body produces twice a day otherwise they will eat him alive.
Suffering from his condition and having witnessed the death of his siblings, soft-spoken, shy and awkward Krill has a death wish. He hates his mother and manages to focus on his targets whenever he projects on them her image.
Many characters in the film make fun of Polka-Dot man's abilities, calling him a sissy and considering him as a sad birthday clown, but his weapons are not like paper confettis, they are lethal killing machines. Krill's polka-dots can indeed turn into deadly weapons when projected from his gauntlets.
Krill's grey uniform is covered in bright polka-dots (slightly reminiscent for what regards the distribution of the polka-dots of designs such as 1980s vintage sequinned polka-dot ensembles by Lillie Rubin View this photo) and he wears bright red goggles, while his gauntlets help him discharge and project his weaponized polka-dots.
When he wears ordinary clothes in the streets of Corto Maltese you get the feeling he wouldn't look out of place in a Wes Anderson film.
The idea of the polka-dot-like virus developing under Krill's skin calls to mind the origin of the polka-dot pattern: in Medieval Europe, polka-dots were indeed linked with disease and impurity as the unevenly spaced dotted fabrics of the time reminded of the rashes produced by contagious diseases, such as smallpox, the Bubonic plague, and leprosy.
Yet the origins of this unlikely fashionable villain should be traced back to 1962 when, on Detective Comics #300, he was introduced as "the bizarre" Mister Polka-Dot, another villain in Batman's universe.
The brainchild of artist Sheldon Moldoff and writer and Batman-co-creator Bill Finger, he used to wear a jumpsuit covered in irregularly-sized colorful dots. In that case the dots were removable and transformed with a controller on his belt into a series of gadgets, including a buzzsaw dot, a man-sized flying saucer dot, a sun dot (a projectile emitting a blinding light) and even a hole dot (it opened a teleportation transport system) all these devices would self-destruct after they had served their intended purposes.
Polka-Dot Man went down in his career and eventually was forgotten, even though it was a bit of a shame considering how his colours brought some much needed Pop Art shades in Gotham.
Why would this new and revised version of Polka-Dot Man be trendy? Well, because polka-dots have always been trending since the mid-19th century. The term "polka dots" was used to refer to a spotted fabric that first appeared in print in 1857 in Godey's Lady's Book, a Philadelphia-based women’s magazine of the time.
The term probably came from the polka dance craze that swept through Europe at the time, even though the connection between the dance and pattern remains unclear (it has probably got to do with the pattern evoking the cheerful nature of the dance).
From children's clothes to womenswear collections (but also interior design pieces), this pattern became extremely popular and polka-dots were never out of fashion.
Often used in beachwear, polka-dots have returned collection after collection: there are designers who turned polka-dots into their signature pattern, among them Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons and Carolina Herrera (who loves polka-dots of different scales and sizes and considers them a neutral for her house; on her website there is even an entire section dedicated to this pattern, called "The Polka Dot Shop").
Browse through images from more recent collections and you will discover how some designers, such as Anrealage, have used this pattern to symbolise our topsy-turvy world in total confusion and chaos.
Art-wise, the dots on Krill's uniform call to mind the colours of Damien Hirst's spot paintings or Alighiero Boetti's late '60s works made with colour code dot labels on paper that the artist employed to create an abstract visual glossary.
Yet, the coloured dots (in a very "Birds of Prey" palette...) discharged by Polka-Dot Man also evoke Yayoi Kusama's infinity rooms, those dark immersive spaces with light dots reflecting and multiplying on mirrors.
And if you're a film classicist and you don't really like superhero films full of adventures, action and, well, gore, just go back to the 1943 Twentieth Century Fox Technicolor musical film "The Gang's All Here".
Directed by Busby Berkeley it featured the number "The Polka-Dot Polka", a song written by Harry Warren and Leo Robin, referencing the 19th Century polka-dot craze in the lyrics.
The number was sang by Alice Faye and featured a polka-dot inspired choreography ("The Polka Dot Ballet") by the Busby Berkeley dancers. So, well, it doesn't matter if you like Polka-Dot Man or not, it looks like "the polka dot lives on," as Alice Faye sang.
In the last few posts we looked at recycling materials to create something new in interior design and fashion, but artists are also proving that materials can be recycled to create new works and raise in this way awareness about environmental issues.
Among the finalists of Natsiaa 2021, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award for example (won by Western Australian artist Timo Hogan) there is a group of textile sculptures representing a group of rodents that may call to mind the mice plague that Australia had between 2020 and 2021, but it is actually dedicated to the Bramble Cay Melomys and it is made by the Erub Arts Collective.
This little brown rodent was considered as extinct already in 2016 by the Queensland state government, but its extinction was officially recognised by Australia only in 2019.
The rodent that lived solely on the tiny sand island of Erub in the Torres Strait, near the coast of Papua New Guinea (PNG), has not been seen since 2009 and its case is considered as the first mammalian extinction caused by human-induced climate change.
You can have a better look at this work and at the other works celebrated in this award, by taking a virtual gallery tour. If you look close, you may realise that the peculiar thing about this group of sculptures is the fact that they are made with ghost nets, a material the Erub Arts Collective specializes in.
In the early '90s a women's craft group started working in a local school in Erub, the most north-eastern islands of the Torres Strait, home to around 400 people and boasting great seafaring heritage traditions, going from elaborately decorated canoes and carved stones to intricate dance costumes and weaponry.
As the years passed, they became a proper group of artists with an intergenerational learning space and specialist arts facilities, working with different mediums. At the heart of Torres Strait's spiritual life is the belief that islands, sea and sky and all of nature possesses a soul or spirit. Knowledge of sacred relationships is maintained in contemporary art practices and is vital to artists as they explore place and identity, promote their culture and protect the environment.
Throughout the years the Erub Arts Collective artists created collaborative works to celebrate the myths and legends of the Torres Strait, introducing in 2008 a new material, ghost nets.
Erub Arts first started creating utilitarian objects such as bags with this material, but then moved onto decorative pieces, sculptures and large installations featuring marine animals. Erub Arts organised the first commercial ghost net exhibition in 2014 in Sydney.
The collective started repurposing the discarded nets and ropes as the group knew they pose a serious threat to the environment.
In a booklet by the Erub Arts collective, the group highlights that "90% of the marine debris entering the coastal regions of Northern Australia is of a fishing nature and originates from all parts of South East Asia. The ghost nets (abandonded fishing nets) drift aimlessly indiscriminately killing as they travel with the ocean currents. 80% of this catch is marine turtles. The collection and disposal of ghost net has also become a huge logistical problem as the areas of Australia that are affected are sparsely inhabited by Indigenous people living in communities. The Ghost Net Movement world wide is rapidly expanding, striving to generate awareness, recycling and sustainability options that will rid the world’s oceans of ghost net."
The possibilities are endless for this material as the Erub Arts Collective can create all sorts of figures in a variety of sizes, using this materials. The best thing about them is that, rather than being merely decorative, the sculptures tell stories about local life and traditions, alerting people about the animal species that are being pushed towards extinction (in the case of the textile group sculpture for the Natsiaa 2021 award), but also reshifting the attention on the traditions of the Torres Strait islands and on the passion of their inhabitants for all marine creatures.
