“Fashion has these fabulous moments that are so psychologically twisted it’s scary!”- Clive Rundle
And all the spaces in between
On Saturday I went to an installation by Erica de Greef on the body of work produced by Clive Rundle. She has titled this exhibition/installation “About Memory.”
My immediate responses to the title were- is it a retrospective of his work? Or is it a personal recollection? Would these questions be answered?
Erica walked me through the exhibition. One of her basic precepts was to examine Clive’s work ‘geographically’ and not chronologically. I found this fascinating. I had so many questions. And I think that that is what she wanted. It was more about the questions than the answers. There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers.
What fascinated me, from an intensely personal point of view, was that the central theme seemed to be about the ‘negative’ spaces.
When you study art, you learn about composition and how important ‘negative’ spaces are, indeed, without them, the ‘positive’ spaces do not exist. Erica and I spoke about the major ambiguity contained in this specific use of language, and its mirrored effects. ‘Negative’ is not necessarily ‘bad’, and ‘positive’ not necessarily ‘good’. Strangely, the two could be seen as synonymous, and in some cases, interchangeable.
What happens around us makes us who we are, in the same way that everything around the exhibition was the exhibition- we were the exhibition, and our presence was an essential part of the installation.
We spoke about the mirror- the mirror in its physical space and its ‘positive’ or literal uses, and then the effects of the mirror, depending on where you stand, and who is looking into it; on which side of the mirror you stand, and all the spaces in between. In this case, for me, the mirror was not the huge reflective surface leaning into the installation, but rather the solid surface with the figure cutouts that was reflective.
After the walk-through, Clive spoke to us about the shoot he had just been on. He had provided the full wardrobe for a short (2 and a half minute) film that was being shot over three days. The film is to be screened at the Cannes Festival.
It was this interaction with him that elicited many more questions.
This response was extremely fascinating and entertaining for me, personally, especially because I have worked on film sets, in the wardrobe department for several years.
I was now being offered a fresh perspective of the experience from a completely different point of view- that of the designer and artist, and an intriguing person such as Clive.
For him, it was all about composition- what appealed to his eye, what held a sense of mystery for him. His world is a visual one, and yet its context changes from moment to moment, and person to person.
He had taken his own photographs on set, from in-between and behind the scenes.
He spoke to us about a few of them and how, for him, it was the unanswerable meaning of ‘composition’.
The real storyline, from his point of view, lay in the ‘negative’ spaces. It was the model leaving set with huge bundles of fabric she was wearing, crouching in the veld, looking like she was picking potatoes, like she was always meant to be there.
There was only one theme, he said, through that experience, and through this installation- it was “relentless”? What was relentless? Was it his experience? Was it the theme of the installation? Was it his life’s work? Or was it my endless questioning?
It was beyond the veil, the rock surface, past the literal and even beyond the figurative. It was about the ‘why’, the ‘other’.
Why has the cinematographer chosen to compose his shots with this collection of clothing (over years and years) in the way that he did? What was his interpretation? What had this experience done for the narrative of the clothing? For Clive and the viewers? And for Erica? And the installation? There are no definite answers. The importance does not lie in the answers… but the questions, and the ‘negative’ spaces, and everything in between.
This is the narrative:- does it resonate?
