Reborn in insect form
Last week I popped down to the opening of a new exhibition between costumier Stella Cecil and illustrator Alexis Goodwin. Stella Cecil is a costume and prop maker/designer who has worked on a huge variety of projects in opera, circus, music videos and carnival, of the Notting Hill variety (oh also not forgetting Noel Fielding’s latest T.V series). She specialises in the truly spectacular and this was Cecil’s first exhibition of her personal work sooooo I was pretty excited to see what she would come up with.
The multi-media collaboration celebrated themes of new life and rebirth through insect forms. Goodwin, through his projected illustrations, created in real time, created a living environment for Cecil’s grasshopper and butterfly-inspired costumes as they transformed and changed shape.
Contrasts were set up between stasis and movement, light and dark, as Cecil’s extravagant carnival-like costumes paraded against Goodwin’s strange and sinister living drawings, taken off the page and unleashed into space and time. Pretty intense stuff indeed… I enjoyed it – wearable art is one of my favourite sub-categories of fashion – and it is always exciting to see something unique, a somewhat rare occurrence these days.
Oh hello little grasshoppers! I would like to wear you.
Stella Cecil with one of her somewhat darker, creations. This model made a child cry at the opening. An occurrence I did not find terribly funny. Clearly. If I did that would make me kindof a horrible person right? So I didn’t. Nope. Not at all.
