SKINSUIT 1&2

Longstanding anthropological factors determine the current production, supply and end use of textile clothing objects. This work explores both what we know and what we don’t know about where design meets the skin. What we wear defines our exterior but it is linked with tightly held lived experiences of memory, emotion and intimacy.  These skin suits have been made specifically for two humans who are at opposite ends of the height spectrum.  A selection of their garments were collected, unpicked and remade as an intersecting whole- displaying the collective of clothing we might wear at any given time. For two months they were asked to wear the fleshy linen ‘skinsuits’ as often as possible without washing them, thus shaping the fabric with their bodily excretions, odour and movement while within them. 

Exhibited at The Papermill Gallery, Angel Place, Sydney (officially part of 2011 Sydney Design Program) and at New Low Gallery, Swanston Street, Melbourne, 2012.

Photography by Arini Byng