'The First Cut' at RMIT Project Space

The First Cut is a group exhibition currently on at RMIT's Project Space gallery. Curated by jeweller and Craft Vic friend Stephen Gallagher, The First Cut consists of seven artists who present fashion in a new light.

"The cut is fundamental to fashion design, the creative act that forms the language of the new object. By this physical action of cutting into a material, the cut confers a meaning of the maker that unites fashion designers and artists.

"The First Cut looks at the moment of inception of an idea exploring both the stages of the creative process when envisaged work materialises and the apprehension and uneasy anticipation of it. Each artist has been chosen for their diversion from mainstream fashion to exhibit new contexts of fashion through interactive installations, performance and object."

There's quite a few familiar names in The First Cut including chums like Adele Varcoe, Ricarda Bigolin and Antuong Nguyen. We've got a sneak peek of the exhibition for you on CLOG today with images of Ricarda and Antuong's collaborative offering, Change Room.

Change Room is an installation that plays with the status of objects and materials found in designer studios, fitting rooms and retail environments. The designer's studio is a space for materials and tools and their potential, the change room as a space for trying on and reflections and the retail environment as a space for display and consumption.

Change Room is an installation that plays with the status of objects and materials found in designer studios, fitting rooms and retail environments. The designer's studio is a space for materials and tools and their potential, the change room as a space for trying on and reflections and the retail environment as a space for display and consumption. In considering these spaces and the materials, mechanisms for display and the dialogues that occur between them, Change Room explores the value and perceived end-use of materials and objects by altering the combination, proximity and intentions behind objects on display.

Tensions between materials, tools and display mechanisms propose a playful and abstracted dialogue that isolates and tests the way we find particular materials suggestive of certain garments or aesthetics and how they can be re-purposed. Materials and objects are tested in means that play with their intended end use, or the particular connotations that they evoke. In breaking down the hierarchies of display associated with a 'dressed' window, visual merchandising and the display of fashion, Change Room celebrates the suggestive and potential of materials and objects in the way their meanings can be assembled and significantly altered through acts of display.

The First Cut has already opened and is on until Thursday 24 March.

There's also a floor talk happening this Thursday 17 March from 4-4.30pm followed by a performance from 5-7pm.

For more information including the exhibition essay written by curator Stephen Gallagher, click here!


Images courtesy of Antuong Nguyen.