Fine Art and Architecture Research Seminar - Canterbury

Fine Art and Architecture Research Seminar
Thursday 1 February
Seminar Room next to the Cragg, Canterbury: 12 -1.30pm.

Dr Victoria Kelley, Reader in Fashion Theory, UCCA, Rochester

'Frayed Garments, Starched Linen: work in progress on abjection and its denial in clothing'

The character of designed objects is dependent on qualities of surface and finish as well as form, qualities that are produced in part by the work of maintenance - washing, cleaning, polishing, pressing, starching - to which they are subjected in their daily use. Textile objects (clothing and household textiles such as table and bed linen) are relatively soft and mutable and thus are particularly subject to wear and dependent on the constant refinishing of their surfaces. Textile objects are also closely connected to the human body and their constant maintenance is a practical and symbolic resistance to the signs of abjection that this close relationship brings.

Victoria Kelley will investigate a range of sources - photographs, advertising images, surviving garments and written texts - which foregraound materiality and its relationship to the social meanings of domestic labour. This process of analysis leads to conderation of the aesthetic as well as the social qualities of surface in everyday things.