the hanging garden collection belongs to the hanging garden party - a fashion performance by alex murray-leslie from chicks on speed, kroot juurak and pelican avenue; it is series of scenes taking place in parallel contexts around the world, each location presents a new scene and dialogue between performance art action, fashion, choreography and sound, blurring the lines between these creative fields, with the outcome of a new language of expression. the scenes present audio visual jam sessions, using the tools of choreography and fashion together with technological body instruments and old craft techniques. fashion returning to phantasy and free spirit; a pure expression of creativity; individuals interpreting the set up of a garden party, performing in an interwoven textile architecture detached/free from esthetic expectations, commercial reasoning and categorical thinking. a textile architecture is generating an architecture of sounds.
the first scene of the performance took place on a small street in paris. the installation of fabric was cut, torn apart, triggered noises, a jungle of sounds and fabric ended building a public space for a party; tuned and arranged live by musician merche blasco
it is the reaction / counterpart to the previous pelican avenue project calyx. whereas calyx deals with the idea of
an artificial organic world, intakt is about utopic and surreal architecture.
the video shows human as a negligible part of a powerful machine.
the abstracted video loop shows fragments of an African girl dancing on the rhythm of repetitive music, hypnotic and ecstatic. the video aims to shift the eye of today's fashionable viewer on a feminity that is rare or even missing in contemporary fashion. the prints for the calyx collection pieces are based on the idea of genetical manipulation. what seams a tropical flower print from far is at close look a composition of 3D fantasy objects that only refer to plant shapes.
the video and the pieces of autumn winter 2008 what was wow are a reworked, reassembled, reblent, reconsidered, recycled, reissued, remixed, rereleased selection of the former presented pelican avenue collections.
drone is the third and last part of the cycle fiction trilogy containing 3 (pelican) videos and their corresponding pelican avenue collections.
after the apocalypse of day-01 and the void of ousted, drone is about the rise of the armies. the video shows brainless clones – marching and dancing repetitively. the collection is a range of large simple tunics in light weight white cotton jersey and more solid stretch pieces worn like an armour as a second layer. the digital prints on these textile shields show different utopian territories that groups the soldiers into 3 futuristic armies.
as well the collection as the video are part of the cycle fiction trilogy and sequel to the previous pelican avenue project day-01: the very new beginning after the apocalypse, desolation, pureness, hope…
the flags showing video stills of day-01 could be interpreted as nostalgia, a perspective, but also history repeating,…
I HOPE WHEN THE WORLD COMES TO AN END I CAN BREATHE A SIGH OF RELIEF BECAUSE THERE IS SO MUCH TO LOOK FORWARD TO (D.D.)
day-01 is a collection of rain coats and swimwear that was based on the idea of apocalyptic weather circumstances.
the video shows an escaping figure threatened by the abstracted surrounding of catastrophic circumstances.
together with ousted and drone, day-01 forms cycle fiction - a circular trilogy about the rise and fall of a civilization.
power places is about individuals in search of meaning.
to escape from conformity and dispassion people search for a spiritual content, far from functionality and reason. it is easy to see through the visual language that achieves a spiritual effect and that appeals to emotional needs for mysticism. imitating those explicit compositions the power places allegories are invented without any references to existing contents and are therefore fully refillable by any human longings for something to be devoted to.
the video shows the 5 symbols, which were used in the collection and printed on silk scarves.
the project focuses on families and their cultural traditions. in western urban centers people with a variety of ethnical and social backgrounds live close to each other. transformed by mass media and internet, individuality is replaced by a “mass-subject” and traditional structures of human relationships are inevitable changing. whether the family and its entity, as the center of human interactions can bear this development is questionable.
can family structures, determined by tradition and cultural heritage, maintain the function of shaping the character of individuals and sustain a differentiated society? what is the identity of modern families, the values and norms it is creating? does migration and increased social and cultural interaction undermine formerly fixed traditions or does it stimulate the awareness of the individual identity? is there a distinction between families formed by immigration and intercultural exchange on the one hand and a mere homogenous family concept?
for the Erben collection three singular family crests, each integrating the subjective perception of the family’s character were created. they are printed on t-shirts and embroidered on jeans shirts. finally each family is portrayed wearing its crest.
selling these items, the chosen families get kind of a star status and the clothes and posters work as “fan items”.
Erben was firstly presented at “le salon de chicha” during Paris fashion week in october 2005.
the objects of édition dame are restricted to a simple geometric form, the ellipse, which functions more like a decorative accessory, than a specific piece of clothing.
middle-aged Viennese women serve as models for the presentation since their everyday lives and biographies formed the inspiration for the series. they seem strong not only in an intellectual way but also in a sensual one. whe women are filmed in their own living room, surrounded by music of their choice, dressed in their own clothes with the ellipse as single outer element. like this the object serves as a frame for the personality of the women wearing it.
the édition dame videos are created in order to be presented as an audiovisual installation with several monitors spread over an empty space. turning the screens towards the same direction creates a movement and a composed floating image and underlines the differences between the environments.
a series of hand knitted rectangular scarves
we regard hysteria as the only possible gate
a fashion performance by krõõt juurak and pelican avenue
presented during paris fashion week in march 2010 with a live soundscape by raphael vandeputte
merci to sweatshop paris
kindly supported by
unit- f büro für mode
pelican avenue is involved in an exhibition and a uniform project at the museum for contemporary art Mu.Zee / Oostend, Belgium. Te kust en te keur is a group show at the museums façade together with artists Caitlin Keogh, Lucile Desamory, Beca Lipscombe and Lucy McKenzie.
The Scottish artist Lucy McKenzie has turned the modernist front of the museum into an exhibition, along with Lucile Desamory, Caitlin Keogh, Beca Lipscombe and pelican avenue. Using drawings, flags, photos and display cases they have made the façade into a ‘canvas’ on which to conjure up the building’s original purpose - the exhibition and sale of all sorts of goods. This group project combines visual art with adverts, fashion, decorative motifs and window dressing. The cultural context of consumption, visual communication and stimulating desires, decorating and exhibiting all comes together in a total artwork.
31/03 - 30/09/2012 Mu.ZEE Romestraat 11 Oostende, Belgium
In this Te Kust en te Keur pelican avenue presents new uniforms for the museum attendants as well as an abundance of draped fabric covering every floor of the museum. Here, too, as she does in all her work, the designer Carolin Lerch calls into question accepted ideas about fashion and fashion designers in both the uniforms and the fabric installation. Her mistrust of consumption takes her work beyond the borders of the commercial and established. Subtle, extremely detailed and refined she tries to give her clothing and environment a critical, conceptual dimension as a means of taking an alternative look at dominant codes and the context in which her work is shown or worn.
The concept of a contemporary uniform is reconsidered, the obvious codes ousted, which results in a series of elaborate knitwear pieces.
This concentrated collection is available at the Mu.ZEE shop and in selected fashion stores worldwide.
- a splendid home for a perfect being
folded madness and chill-out posing in a spotless trap
laced in, cat chain curvy days
domestica challenges the idea of perfect homes and their creators.
sharp pleats are unfolded, precisely refolded like luxurious napkins.
a glimpse of artificiality. utopic drape prints shape tromp l’oeil sculpturing.
this spring summer collection is proposing hyperfemininity replacing being
feminine.
The appropriate ashland beach wear, the spring summer 2014 items, includes a luxurious woven jacquard beach towel showing an abstraction of the Stromboli setting, tie-up string sandals and knitted fine gage swimwear which was carefully programmed to become an elaborate p ave classic. With its innovative knit - to - fit technology and high tech yarn the pieces are precisely engineered to achieve a smooth and seamlessly sculptured fit.
we’re former is about the correlation of making and imagining. the technique informs the process, the process informs the idea. there is no pure imagination. objects released from time leaving the image behind
what remains is design
informed garments
transformed garments
deformed garments
reformed garments
formed garments
for the summer set for 2015, pelican avenue started from the idea and the characteristics of hand silk screening. the pieces were developped through interaction between the practice of the technique and the thinking process.
Shady Sadie is the title of a collaboration with multimedia artist Michiel Helbig on an installation showing 5 figures displaying a series of capes and gloves. The minimal yet atypical constructions are built with modular tubes taken from a basic shop display system. On the one hand the material is using the original static construction and on the other hand it is generating the movement and personality of the figures. The dressing of each figure with nothing but a knitted cape and a pair of handmade leather gloves transforms them into actual creatures and aims for a maximum of character with a minimum of intervention.
The installation addresses the evolution of technology and media and the recent wave of automation in which the human countenance is disapearing or being artificially reconstructed. As a reaction to the over-presence of images and the current lack of content in opposision to the superiority of images, the project also consciously reduces the components of the visual language as well as the design itself to the essence.
Shady Sadie is on view from 19.04 - 16.06.2015 at Gallery Mieke Van Schaijk in `s-Hertogenbosch
