Clothing is liminal: what we wear is at once.
intrinsic and extrinsic
it makes the body a socially acceptable part of the public world around it,
but also becomes an intimate part of our skin.
We absorb what we are wearing into
What we wear is not only tied to our sense of self, our identity, it is
intimately linked to our physical bodies, as we experience the world through our clothing.
the surface of our body, incorporating it into our bodily schema.
Garments mark a nexus point between private and public, self and other, body and not body, as such they are at once both: the place where the external world and the internal body join and alter.
In my work I explore the experience of that moment of melding, trying to capture the corporeal implications of
the instant at which clothing shifts from garment to flesh.
Aluminium is bent in ways that suggest the folds of the body or that of a garment.
The form of the work is deliberately abstracted to create a sense of either/or.
The titles of my work articulate a narrative of interaction between clothing and the body, a suggestion of wear that is echoed in the work itself.
The threads that are stitched through each piece, and drape and trail from my work at once speak of hair, and of garments unraveling to reveal yet more clothing/skin.
Paper is painted to mimic cloth.
My work captures the complexity of the relationship between clothing and the body, and the sensuality of the transubstantiation that occurs every morning when we get dressed.
Clare Bond About my Work