Material Evidence: 100 Headless Woman

17 October - 13 December 1998 in the Entire Gallery

Material Evidence: 100 Headless Woman is a collaborative project by New Zealand artist Julia Morison and Australian-born fashion designer Martin Grant.The installation consists of ten dresses designed, cut and fabricated by Julia Morison and Martin Grant. The dresses are not wearable, but lie between costume/fashion/dress/sculpture/painting. They are designed to the size of an average woman, but elongated to around a metre longer than average height. They are suspended from the ceiling in an installation customised to each exhibition space.

 

The dresses allude to poetic and psychoanalytical realms. However, their own physicality is undeniable, given the emphasis on very specific materials - such as gold, silver, lead, excrement, blood, pearl, clay - and the unusual and very striking forms Morison and Grant have devised for each garment.

Ten Dresses continues Morison’s project of working with a refined group of ten symbols and ten materials that relate to the Jewish Kabbalah. She has sustained this approach through a diverse series of paintings, photography and sculpture over the last 15 years.

Material Evidence: 100 Headless Woman is a partnership between City Gallery Wellington and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.