>>PREVIEW
ArtaWEARness FASHION GALA
Friday, March 31
Alberta College of Art and Design
The Alberta College of Art and Design’s ArtaWEARness has grown over the years to materialize as a dazzling fusion between contemporary fashion and visual art. This year, the sixth annual event is a massive, runway-style art-couture show, put on by a diverse group of students from the institution.
The experimental nature of the exhibition provides a unique opportunity for artists working in a variety of disciplines to showcase their creativity, using the body as their canvas – the catalyst of their creations. The show will include artists and designers with backgrounds from jewelery, fibre, sculpture and painting, to print-making, media arts and digital technologies.
Wearable arts guru Dee Fontans, creator of the Outing the Body series, hosts this year’s show, overseen by Patricia Duquette. The performance-based event will explore the theme of "Art within the context of the animated human form," revealing unique interpretations by 15 student artists and designers who have been juried into the exhibition, including performance art works and a sculptural art garden displayed in separate sites throughout ACAD.
The student works displayed cross a number of mediums and styles. Rhianna Edwards and Jessie Forman’s collection, titled Nuclear Winter, uses the tropes of a dead winter, icy stalactites and cool whites for their clothes. Or, as the artists say, "the idea of a nuclear winter, after the bomb has dropped, and humanity is slowly mutating and sinking from a technological peak back into tribalism."
From its humble debut six years ago, ArtaWEARness has exploded – last year’s event drew nearly a thousand viewers, as much for the avant-garde appeal as for a glimpse of emerging artists and designers. It began as the vision of fibre student Natalie Gerber, who had the desire to create an opportunity for students to display fashion-influenced artworks in the public eye.
From discussions Gerber had with Dee Fontans on the concepts of cultural diversity, wearable art and how it would fit into fashion design, the first ArtaWEARness was held in the year 2000 in front of a modest yet highly receptive crowd of 100. With the continual guidance of Fontans, the event continues to offer a medium where the body is a vehicle and to exhibit a distinctly vibrant flavour of visual art.
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