PQ and Central St Martins

Hermione Flynn not only travelled to Prague to attend the International Theatre Designers’ Conference – PQ, she also exhibited three different works there, one alongside professional theatre designers from around the world. From there she travelled to London and studied at the prestigious Central St Martins College of Art & Design, whose graduates include John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney.

Here’s a look at Hermione’s report on these experiences – part of her final year of study on the design degree.

Throughout my four years studying the Bachelor of Performance Design degree, I have had the opportunity to define exactly what it is I want to pursue as an artist. Performance Design is a new and relatively unknown discipline allowing enormous artistic freedom, as the rules, regulations and limits remain undefined. It is in this environment of creative flexibility that I have established my interest in clothing design as a fine art. I was given the opportunity to exercise these ideas to an international audience at the Prague Quadrennial Scenofest Exhibition 2007 and at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design in London.

PQ

The Prague Quadrennial Scenofest Exhibition is a celebration of theatre and performance design from all over the world. The exhibition consists of three major sections – the national exhibit, the national students’ exhibit and Scenofest. The national exhibit consisted of a range of exhibit spaces dedicated to the most respected theatre practitioners from each attending country. Each space consisted of a well-designed display featuring videos, models, drawings, photographs and costumes as a means to re-present previously performed theatre. This was an invaluable opportunity to view the world’s leading theatre design and I found some of the work and the exhibition designs hugely inspiring.

National Students’ Exhibit

The national students’ exhibit consisted of a layout similar to the national exhibit; however it featured the work of students studying performance design, theatre design and scenography from 51 countries. The New Zealand student exhibit consisted of two separate spaces, ‘In-tent’ which was a tent we pitched to the left of the main entrance where we displayed our performative installations, and ‘Ex-tent’ which was located in the allocated national student exhibit space which we treated as a timeless exhibition space with no actual performance.

My work in the national student exhibit specifically consisted of a collection of drawings of six white leather jackets, of which three were realised and exhibited. The inspiration for this collection was the physical and sexual violation to which women from New Zealand gangs are subjected. Referencing the iconic gang leather jacket for men, these garments have been adapted to provide physical protection, not for street warfare, but domestic violence. Features such as padding on the crotch and belts restricting the legs were used to communicate my intention. The drawings were exhibited in ‘Ex-tent’ alongside the three jackets which were ‘pitched’ like tents to reference ‘In-tent.’ Each day one of the jackets was removed and was worn as a performance installation in ‘In-tent’ accompanied by the sound installation of squealing kettles designed by Rose Kirkup and Richard Larson. The live model wore the jacket inside a zipped up compartment of the tent and was viewed through the thin fly screens by audience members.

The space had been designed by Claire Middleton and myself to reference a domestic interior. The remainder of the tent was also designed by Yu San Kang, Rose Kirkup, Richard Larson, Caitlin Le Harivel, Marina Davis and Christopher Ulutupu to support a journey representing New Zealand from the coast through the land to the domestic space This work was quite controversial in comparison to many of the other exhibits which consisted of conventional costume drawings and theatre model boxes. We received a range of reactions to our work, from a physical intervention to confusion to an extreme fascination. It was made obvious to us, in comparison to the other student work, that our degree was quite controversial and unique.

Scenofest

The Scenofest exhibit was located in the Industrial Palace and was a festival space for exhibition, theatre performances and workshops dedicated to Aristophanes’ play ‘The Birds’. Part of this exhibition was a critiqued display of student responses to ‘The Birds.’ This work was presented to and critiqued by some of the most influential performance practitioners in the world, including Heiner Goebbels.

The work we exhibited in the critiqued Scenofest exhibition was a series of light boxes designed by myself, Marina Davis, Caitlin Le Harivel, Meggan Frauenstein and Leanne Stevenson to re-present the essence of the performance installations we staged in New Zealand. Our brief was to use pertinent themes in Aristophanes’ ‘The Birds’ to create a performative experience, exhibition or installation at Massey University.

In addition I also entered a performance installation as a professional practitioner that was exhibited in the Scenofest Festival. I designed an endurance piece (Bird Watching), consisting of a model pacing continuously upon a grass catwalk, dressed in a feather dress, strutting bird-like, as audience members sat in a deck chair analysing her journey through a pair of binoculars. I represented this in Prague through a cage-like light box filled with feathers, a grass floor and a video loop showing the actual event. The work of other attending countries was again, far more conventional, mostly featuring drawings of costumes and theatre model boxes. When we were critiqued, although there was initial confusion as to what exactly we were presenting, the feedback from these world leading theatre practitioners was an exceptional learning experience.

As part of the Scenofest I also staged ‘Bird Watching’ as a professional practitioner. The performance had a good deal of exposure and was received with great interest. There were moments of tension as audience members intervened with the model’s endless journey. To stage this at such a prestigious worldwide event was an exceptional experience and opportunity.

Learning from PQ

The whole journey in Prague was an enormous learning experience – how to collaborate with a team, how to lead a team in realizing an exhibition, the technical hiccups, audience reaction and interaction, exhibition and spatial design… On top of this learning experience through practical realization, we were also exposed to exceptional work in the Prague Quadrennial Exhibition, at the Prague Biennale fine arts exhibition, viewing world-renowned theatre, attending workshops and in particular an incredibly inspiring lecture about architecture and the body arranged by Dorita Hannah. I am extremely grateful I was given this opportunity to exhibit my work in Prague, and I feel this experience has equipped me considerably to pursue my artistic intentions in the future.

Central St Martins College of Art & Design

I was in Prague for two weeks and then in London for three weeks attending a Fashion Design course at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design. Central Saint Martins is an incredibly prestigious fashion design school and is world renowned for producing original and avant-garde works. This school is leading the way in fashion design. Graduates include John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan and Stella McCartney who are some of the most prominent and respected fashion designers in the world. I have always admired the work of these specific designers so aimed to attend Central Saint Martins to assess the environment and teaching principles that had generated such controversial work.

Tutors of the Bachelor of Fashion Design degree at Central Saint Martins taught a class consisting of 28 students from all over the world – France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Turkey, India, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, America, Brazil etc. Marina Davis and myself were the first students to ever attend this course from New Zealand. Our brief was to use London as inspiration to design a collection. The first week consisted of research, as we toured around the Victoria and Albert costume department and surrealism exhibition, the Tate art gallery and the Tate Modern art gallery, a breath-taking Anthony Gormley exhibition at the Hayward Art Gallery, Spitalfield Markets, Brick Lane Markets, Camden Markets and the high fashion nightlife and club scene in London. The working class predominantly dressed in head to toe sportswear – no mater how obese or unhealthy they looked – particularly inspired me. I began designing a collection of sportswear for the obese.

Our second week consisted of artist studies, design exercises and drapery on the mannequin. The environment was fantastic as we were based on Charring Cross Road in Soho and the range of people attending the course provided an interesting insight into other cultures and ideas. Some of the techniques taught to us were particularly useful and the work created on the mannequins was exceptional. Our third week was then focussed on fashion illustration and we moved to the Tottenham Court Road campus where we spent two intensive days studying life drawing.

Learning from Central St Martins

The course was an important learning experience as I discovered that fashion design is not where I want to pursue my interest in clothing as a fine art. The tutors were incredibly helpful and inspiring, however they reiterated to me Central Saint Martins interest in pursuing original clothing design rather than intellectual concepts, which is where my interests lie. Marina was awarded top of the class grades alongside an Italian girl, and I was awarded second. We discovered that the intellectual integrity we apply to our work (taught through our studies in New Zealand) was quite unusual in comparison to other students. The tutor recommended that I pursue my Masters in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London, graduates of which include Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. The experience in London was tremendous.

Overall, I had initially expected our experience in Europe to be an eye-opening experience, of which it was; however in a way I had not suspected. I had suspected we would feel like small fish in large pond, but we left aware of how unique our degree in New Zealand was. We all felt a sense of excitement at the prospect that Performance Design was such an unexplored territory. The experience has left me feeling confident and eager to continue exploring clothing design as a fine art.